Since its founding in 2023, the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival has celebrated travel writers as bridge builders; women and men who reach for the far horizon, who venture out from

It’s done! It’s done! After four years work I’ve completed the final draft of my new book. I may still be coy about its title and the nature of the

In its third year, this weekend’s 2025 Sherborne Travel Writing Festival unfolded with dazzling speakers, ecstatic audiences and a relieved curator (that’s me, folks). As the UK’s only annual festival

Sunlight sparkles off the broad Dniester River. Smugglers’ tracks wind across the snow and into silent woods. Patriotic oligarchs in Gucci tracksuits hunt wild boar with AK-47s. In 2013 when

At last I am at my desk editing the new book, drawing together the experiences of more than a dozen extraordinary research trips to Bhutan, Kerala, the Peruvian Amazon, Jerusalem,

To Benedict Allen, Don McCullin, Noo Saro-Wiwa, Nick Danziger, Monisha Rajesh, Kassia St Clair, Hilary Bradt, Katie Carr, Bijan Omrani, Tom Parfit and Davina Quinlivan, and to our wonderful audiences,

Apologies for my lengthy silence. Since my last newsletter I’ve been travelling, making research trips to India, California, the US Great Plains, British Columbia and Bhutan. Three weeks ago I

These last years have brought dramatic changes to our lives: Brexit, Covid lockdowns, soaring energy costs, climate change and the largest, most brutal war in Europe since 1945. While our

Tim Hannigan is a lovely man. The Cornish writer and academic is author of several narrative history books, including the award-winning Raffles and the British Invasion of Java. His book The

After two years of personal and collective loss, for so many of us, we seemed at last to have started on a new, hopeful journey – until two weeks ago.

Once in a life? No, twice in a life. At least. Long, long ago and fresh out of film school, I worked with David Bowie in Berlin. At the end

A few days ago we lost the great, gifted writer Jan Morris. Today I’m honoured to remember her in the Guardian alongside Pico Iyer, Marcel Theroux, Kapka Kassabova, Sophy Robert and Hugh

With a few dozen days to go until the US election, and only weeks until the UK’s political insanity casts it adrift in the North Atlantic fog, the lies are

How are you doing? The pandemic has touched so many of our lives. I hope that you and yours have suffered nothing more than the inconvenience of the lockdown, but

Cycling moves me. When I first came to the UK, my bicycle gave me a sense of belonging in my adopted home. I belted up Knightsbridge in rush hour, wheeled

Happy New Year, und einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr. Why the German? Because I’ve just learned that “Pravda Ha Ha” will be published in Germany in September by Karl

It’s Christmas Day in Berlin in 1977. Seated at the table are David Bowie and the film-maker David Hemmings, along with various partners, children and add-ons like me. At a

If you could, which contemporary politician would you ask to explain himself? Might you ask Donald Trump how he can sleep at night? Would you ask some of the UK

Why are we drawn to certain cities? Perhaps because of a story read in childhood. Or a chance teenage meeting. Or simply because the place touches us, embodying in its