When I travelled to North Korea in 2013 I did so under my own name but with a contrived identity, as an executive of a UK tour operator (one that really exists) wanting to recce the DPRK as a possible new destination for my clients…
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The paperback edition of The Accidental Detectorist – published late September 2023 – has a different cover design from the hardback. Less bucolic, more object-based. The thinking goes…
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I wrote this 20 years ago:
All you need to take to the lighthouse: a pair of binoculars, and The Oxford Book of the Sea. Actually you won't even need binoculars. In the decommissioned lantern of the lighthouse is an old gunsight from HMS Victorious…
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In the Tinners Arms in Zennor I met an engineer
who said he owned a tin mine, and would I like
to see it?
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In the Shikumen Museum in Shanghai’s Xintiandi district there was a room that, when I walked into it, stirred a sense of familiarity. Shikumen, meaning ‘stone gate’, was the name given to the typical houses of Shanghai…
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As we face the possibility of a second lockdown, of unknown proportions and duration, I recall the first. We were self-isolating in deep country with a front-row seat on the Milky Way…
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Occasionally I come across a book on my shelves (Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook is one) in which I have written my name followed by my first address in London: ‘18 Park Square East, NW1.’ I can understand why…
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