What’s the first location that springs to mind when thinking of setting up a Charles Dickens festival? It’s unlikely to be a Texan island. But in 1973, Galveston Island, in the Gulf of Mexico, began a small festival dedicated to the English author. During the 19th century, Galveston, Texas, was the US’s second busiest immigration … Read more
On 18 January 2007 a young American woman died in a car crash in Guatemala City; her name was Hanley Denning and she was only 36 years old. The news of her death barely made it to the outside world, but in Guatemala, thousands of people went into mourning. To Guatemalans, Hanley Denning was known … Read more
My grandmother, who lived in London, took my seaside-dwelling sisters and me to the Natural History Museum when I was about five. I have a vivid memory of standing for a very long time, looking up at the vastness that was the blue whale. This magnificent model, with its expressive eyes, was suspended from the … Read more
It sounded impressive to say, “I’m not around this weekend, I’m off to Belgium for a festival”, but it wasn’t to any Glastonbury equivalent that I was speeding through Le Tunnel (do French-speakers call it ‘The Tunnel’?). I was heading to Tourinnes-Saint-Lambert in the district of Walloon Brabant to attend “The Festival of the Pumpkin … Read more
On my first visit to Italy I was 13. It was on a Schools Abroad trip, on which we spent a night in the port of Brindisi, where I and my fellow schoolmates were sexually harassed by scary sailors, made sick by the stink of diesel and where nothing could have been further from the … Read more
I have been lucky enough to spend a great deal of time in New Zealand, a country that will always be very special to me. The following article appeared in Oberoi Magazine. On the morning of 3 February 1931, people in the Hawke’s Bay region of New Zealand’s North Island woke to what seemed like … Read more
In 2019, before the pandemic hit, I was lucky enough to return to Melbourne, Australia, one of my favourite cities. The following article appeared in Oberoi magazine (unfortunately, with half of the final sentence cut off by the printers!) Melbourne has a long history of loving art. The first art gallery in Australia was opened … Read more