The jungle orchestra provided a rousing soundtrack as I steered my dugout canoe from the geographic certainty of Brazil’s Urubu River into the randomness of the flooded rainforest: the syncopated rhythm as each gasp for breath was louder than the paddle splash that preceded it; the atonal yet beguiling melodies of myriad creatures in a […]

 The Berlin Wall, Germany. Thirty years after the fall of this most iconic symbol of the Cold War, I am still grateful that it did not happen whilst I sat on top. You may wonder how I managed to climb up there in the first place but that remains a closely guarded secret.

Use of the labels ‘Nordic’ and Baltic’ suggests that these groups of countries are defined by their common traits. However, despite intensive programmes of assimilation under the Russian Tsars and the Soviets followed by 12 years of “ever-closer union” through EU membership, the main trait shared by the Baltic States is their uniqueness. Likewise, the […]

From the first volley of ‘ta-ta-ta-taaa’, Beethoven’s fifth spirited me away and struck untouched emotional chords. The musical drama conjured that night, within a mysterious triangle formed by the conductor’s extravagant flourishes, the paper enshrining Beethoven’s genius, and the musicians’ trance-like dexterity, was matched by the grandeur and opulence of its surroundings: the marble statues, […]

Below the picture-postcard Lisbon is another Lisbon. A Lisbon without trams, decorative tiles or salted cod, from where the cobbled streets and red roofs wrapped around the city’s seven hills cannot be glimpsed, a little-known underworld where only adventurous souls enter and only after donning hard hats. Their reward is a chance to rekindle their […]

 Rainy season, Brazilian Amazon. Canoeing through a flooded rainforest brings the traveller up close and personal with monkeys, sloths and other creatures that usually spy unseen from their remote green watchtowers. And the swifter travel through swathes of forest barely accessible on foot makes the jungle feel endless. Yet WWF estimates that over a […]

Originally posted on Nomad Scribe:
John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, dining with King João I of Portugal Ever since my arrival in Lisbon, whenever new Portuguese acquaintances discover that I am English they invariably refer to the world’s oldest alliance or to Catherine of Braganza’s role in popularising tea-drinking in England. Their enthusiasm…

We face multiple threats on our streets, but on International Mine Awareness Day it is worth reflecting on one of humanity’s cruelest and most enduring weapons. First used on a wide scale in World War II, landmines still kill or maim over 4000 people per year. I witnessed their threat on a visit to an […]

 Chapel of Bones, Évora, Portugal – “We bones that are here, for yours await”. Await they did and their patience was rewarded as 5000 skeletal companions arrived. In the early 1500s, Franciscan monks relocated the bones from Évora’s overcrowded cemeteries to the chapel and slotted them into every crevice of every wall and pillar […]

 Winter in Madrid viewed from my office at the British Consulate-General. Madrid has extreme seasonal variations in temperature, with a record high of 40.6 °C and a record low of -10 °C, and is flanked by mountains, but snow rarely settles in the city centre. Indeed, this was the heaviest snowfall that many Spanish […]