I wrote this in 2011, more in tribute to the liberating power of satnav (then very new) than as a homage to Hollywood, which is really a world-wide community of sitting with strangers in a darkened space and being transporting to the far corners of the imagination by images and music. ‘Hollywood is on a hill,… Continue reading
Browsing Category Travel
Across Turkey by train
The first 30 years of Turkey’s tourism story has been utterly dominated by air travel, and more recently cruise ships. It’s the rare intrepid visitor who drives all the way. But now the train is becoming a realistic travel option within Turkey, and even an alternative way to get there. While we continue to fret over… Continue reading →
Under Milk Wood – 70 years on
The BBC first broadcast Under Milk Wood, “‘A Play for Voices”, on the Third Programme on 25 January 1954 (two months after Thomas’s death). The play featured a distinguished, all-Welsh cast including Richard Burton. Dylan Thomas knew Under Milk Wood was good, even in its hurried, jumbled, unfinished form in which he gave several performances in 1953, with a cast,… Continue reading →
90 years ago, Patrick Leigh Fermor sets off on his great walk to Constantinople
Irongate Wharf, the exact spot where Patrick Leigh Fermor left England in the Stadthouder Willem, as he recounted in A Time of Gifts 90 years ago this month, on the ebbing afternoon of Saturday, December 9th, 1933, a young man of 19, shrugging off a hangover, with a backpack borrowed from a friend, walked under… Continue reading →
The Mastersingers’ Market – Nuremburg distils the Christmas spirit
The Nuremberg Christmas Market opened on December 1st 2023 and runs until 2pm on Christmas Eve. **** On a late afternoon of nipping chill, in a city square in the heart of Europe, I found the antidote to brash, glitzy, overblown, commercial Christmas. As the daylight ebbed, a cheerful glow pulsed up from the… Continue reading →
On the trail of Dr Who – an ‘adventure in time and space’ around South Wales
The first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast on 23 November 1963. Radio Times announced “a new Saturday-afternoon television series of adventures in time and space”. Three of the original features are still with us – the ominous theme tune by Ron Grainer, arranged by Delia Derbyshire in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The Tardis, a 1960s police box…. Continue reading →