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There wasn’t the usual levity when I walked into my French village’s southern boulangerie early on Tuesday morning. The queue was quiet...

This little story starts with me waiting nervously in the anteroom of a Magistrates Court in Brighton in 1975, not because of any crime,

In “To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church”, one of Robert Burns’ most amusing yet profound poems, written in 1786, the...

We must begin with abject apologies to Jan Morris; that great writer, doyenne of travellers, and Celtic poet, whose book title we have...

For the last six months or so, I have been engaged in a mammoth reading project which is the biggest one I have ever undertaken...