Travel
Napoleon's birthplace feels more Italian than French
Napoleon’s birthplace, Casa Buona-parte, in Ajaccio, Corsica’s capital, is pretty grand. It has high ceilings, generous, silk-lined rooms and a…
The hell of being Michael Palin
In these diaries, which I found excellent in a very specific way, Michael Palin tells us about his life between…
On safari in Gloucestershire
The heat was still sweltering as we headed off at dusk towards the hide to watch wildlife with our enthusiastic…
Four gadgets to take on holiday — and two to leave behind
One inarguably good thing about electronic publishing is that it solves that old quandary about what books to pack for…
The ultimate guide to Cornwall
Before writing this review I spent an hour looking for my original Pevsner paperback on Cornwall, published in 1951 (the…
The nervous passenger who became one of our great travel writers
Sybille Bedford all her life was a keen and courageous traveller. Restless, curious, intellectually alert, she was always ready to…
From Scylax to the Beatles: the West's lust for India
Peter Parker on the age-old allure of the Indian subcontinent
My desert island poet
If I had to be marooned on a desert island with a stranger, that stranger would be John Burnside. Not…
The gilded generation - why the young have never had it so good
The statistics speak for themselves. Today’s gilded generation is the most blessed that ever lived
A secret from my African childhood has become a deeper mystery
About 55 years ago, when I was about ten, my younger brother Roger and I discovered a slave pit in…
What seamen fear more than Somali pirates
If a time traveller were to arrive in our world from, say, 1514 — a neat half-millennium away — what…
Clarissa Tan's Notebook: Why I stopped drinking petrol
Florence was in fog the day I arrived. Its buildings were bathed in white cloud, its people moved as though…
The Navigators
The 2014 winner of The Spectator’s award for unconventional travel writing
Tanya Gold: Child-friendly, sex-free, nut-heavy – just the hotel for my 40th birthday
Woolley Grange is a child-friendly country house hotel that seems, at first, entirely monstrous — a grey Tudor house in…
American Smoke, by Iain Sinclair - review
If you have read Iain Sinclair’s books you will know that he is a stylist with a love of language.…
What would Auden have deemed evil in our time? European jingoism
‘Goodbye to the Mezzogiorno’ was the first Auden poem that Alexander McCall Smith read in his youth. He discovered it…
Christopher Howse takes the slow train in Spain — and writes a classic
This is probably not a book for those whose interest in Spain gravitates towards such contemporary phenomena as the films…
England’s 100 best Views, by Simon Jenkins - review
Sam Leith is transported by the finest scenery in England
Walking in Ruins, by Geoff Nicholson - review
Geoff Nicholson is the Maharajah of Melancholy. The quality was there in his novels, it was there in his non-fiction…
Move Along, Please, by Mark Mason - review
Mrs Thatcher was widely believed to have said that ‘any man over the age of 26 who finds himself on…
Jeremy Clarke: The day I walked into a postcard
This time last year the postman delivered a picture postcard depicting a village square in Provence. The photograph on the…
Never seen the need for a class system? Take a long-haul flight
Usually it is annoying when you have to board an aeroplane via a shuttle bus rather than an airbridge. The…
Island, by J. Edward Chamberlin - review
‘Tom Island’ — that was the name I was given once by a girl I met on an island in…
Notes on…Normandy
There are some, I know, who for whom Normandy means the three Cs — cider, cream and calvados. But if,…
