Preservation Hall, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, is a lowlit capsule of whirring ceiling fans and crumbling walls - cosily monochrome save for the Exit signs in red neon. At the front (there is no stage) Shannon Powell, 'the King of Treme'…
Read MoreLa Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic of Venice, is agitated. It's a sunny day in late October - the squares are full of pavement lunchers, the motoscafo drivers are wearing sunglasses and look like Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita…
Read MoreDid he ever feel frightened? Alang Bay, an impish-looking 85-year-old, looked puzzled. It was a stupid question. “No! When the Americans see me they shit in their trousers and run away!” Mr Bay is a Vietnamese war hero.
Read MoreThe clues are there for anyone to see - the piles of red rubble on the beaches, the big bones scattered along one section of shoreline - but nobody in the Canadian fishing village of Red Bay had thought to put them together.
Read MoreWith its façade of new brick and tinted glass the five-storey building in the west of downtown Baltimore could be the HQ of an asset management company or an executive recruitment agency. In fact it is dedicated to the study of human death and its causes.
Read MoreIt's a beautiful summer's evening in Central London - a busy time for saving lives. The blue sky is streaked with contrails and out on the River Thames, between Chelsea and Albert Bridges, the crew of an orange E-Class lifeboat…
Read MoreSunderland in May. The sun was trying, and failing, to get out and the ruffled grey sea was what people sometimes describe as pewter. In the bar of the Marriott Hotel I sat where Laurence Stephen Lowry used to sit half a century ago.
Read MoreThis is how fate works. Hugh Aynesworth was a 32-year-old reporter with the Dallas Morning News when President John F Kennedy came to town on November 22, 1963. That morning, feeling miffed that he wasn't assigned to cover the story,
Read MoreIt was nearly midnight in downtown Dallas. As we crossed Dealey Plaza on Elm Street the taxi driver braked sharply - 'This is where the first bullet hit' - then floored the accelerator, whipped us round on to Stemmons Freeway and headed for Parkland Memorial Hospital at 80 miles an hour.
Read MoreThe ten whirring ceiling fans made little impact on the humid air, which felt as sludgy as the bottom of an espresso cup. It was the live music that sliced through the torpor. The Casa de la Trova in Santiago de Cuba is steeped in the troubadour traditions that gave the world son…
Read MoreThe trail bike kicked up a plume of dust as it approached across the high desert steppe of south-west Mongolia. Orjan Johansson dismounted, unclipping the body protectors that made him look like the action hero of a computer game.
Read MoreBig storm over the Mississippi River. Right-thinking folks is indoors, minding their secret hoard of lickrish pieces and pinch-bug beetles, but we ain't no right-thinking folks. 'Let's go to the cemetery and cure some warts!' says the juvenile pariah sitting across from me.
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