I know – I’m too late for Halloween. But whatever the time of year – I do love graveyards. Old graveyards. Whether it’s a Neolithic burial mound, a stone cross on the moors or a marble mausoleum, each has stories to tell. It should therefore not be any great surprise that a certain amount of…
I know I promised you a graveyard blog this week… but I’ve got something better for you. Drum roll please. I have a new book – working title The Sun At Midnight – coming out in time for Christmas (which is probably a good thing as it is set over Christmas).
There’s bears in them there hills. Seriously. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park – which straddles the Tennessee / North Carolina border – claims to have bears. About 1700 of them. That was all I needed to hear and we were off, cameras poised, on a bear hunt. Entering the park, we stopped at the…
Museums are not about rare and fabulous objects safely locked behind protective glass. At least the good ones aren’t. Museums should be about people and the lives they lived. Museums should tell stories. And never have I found more stories in a single place than at the fabulous Museum of Appalachia in Tennessee. The…
It is amazing where music will lead you. In this case – to a shotgun shack in the Appalachian Mountains and an art deco railway carriage in Chattanooga. Recently we went to a gig by US folk artist Diana Jones. She sings songs of Appalachia. Mine disasters, murders – cheerful stuff. She’s very good…
Or… how I went to Ally Pally and nearly lost my mind. Regular readers will know that some time ago I took up knitting. I’m not that good at it – but I really like it. So – a friend told me about this Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace. I must…
Continuing my present habit of visiting troubled parts of the world, last week I found myself in Jerusalem. The city’s history stretches into the distant past – but it seems always to have been embroiled in conflict… According to the history books (well – Wikipedia) it has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked…
Regular readers of this blog will know that I travel a lot in my day job – and sometimes it takes me to places I might not otherwise visit. These places can be unexpected in ways both good and bad. I’ve just returned from Erbil, in the Kurdish region of Iraq – and for…