In the long descent to Belgrade airport a patchwork of little fields rolled out below us, a colourful quilt stitched with hamlets and smallholdings that gently remind me I know little of Serbia beyond its recent bloody history.  Insofar as I had thought about it at all I suppose I had expected great modern industrial […]

Brokebus Mountain Wyoming, July 2011 We were in Annie Proulx country when our bus, full of scholars attending the 9th Walter Scott conference in Laramie, Wyoming, broke down 10,000 feet up in the Snowy Range. If the Man from Laramie could have met the Man from Abbotsford would they have had anything in common? Maybe more than one might think. They were both familiar […]

370kph-420kph. As the world’s fastest train accelerates, the Shanghai skyline tilts. Pinnacles of skyscrapers loom crazily towards us. If the tilting ‘maglev’ and the tower blocks represent the future of China, at ground level the past breaks through. Labyrinths littered with bikes, trikes, huts, tenements, washing lines and sorrowful birdcages. In the Marriage Park parents swap notes of their children’s ages, […]

Living at the Château de Lavigny  Entrance to Chateau Lavigny [Last year I was fortunate enough to spend three weeks at this Writers’ Residence in Switzerland. You can find out more about it via the link] Part 1 The night before we left Château de Lavigny there was a wild storm. We’d had windy days, even rainy […]