An Author's Notebook

Dubrovnik, jewel of the Adriatic, once a prosperous trading hub, now a tourist's dream. Our half-term visit in October to this beautiful...

Here we are again in Covid country. Either I've become habituated to lockdowns, or I secretly crave a quiet existence, as I'm not f...

What secrets does our house keep? Credit: William Lam Archaeologists recently found a fragment of Roman pottery in my home town, in the...

Two themes are dominating my notebook this week - literary festivals and our imminent move to a new house. In amongst pages of removal quote...

Travel diary WWI sites in Belgium and France Every evening in the Belgian town of Ypres, people of all nationalities gather at the Menin ...

Hermaphrodite Mum   Three kids and a single mum It's a sight to make every mother's heart sink: your child, curled up with her he...

Notes from the Henley Literary Festival 2017 My son meets children's author Katherine Rundell, who researched her latest novel Th...

A few months ago I had the pleasure of shepherding a group of excitable seven-year olds around the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The highligh...