It’s just on 5.00 am. As I leave the comfort of my hotel room in pitch darkness, a crescent moon hangs low, like a scimitar on the horizon, its light almost no match for the billions of stars that pepper an inky black  sky. The only sound is a  plaintive yip, yip from a lone jackal wandering […]

Twenty odd long years between visits is, as George Orwell once said,is a little like ‘coming up for air.’ In a different time, when the world was younger than today, my parents brought me from England to this city that clings limpet- like to the bottom of the African continent. Then I was just a […]

In hindsight, perhaps I should not have read, “ First They Killed My Father,” Loung Ung’s harrowing and deeply disturbing autobiography of her time during Pol Pot’s misguided revolution (1975 – 1979) which condemned over two million of it’s own citizens to an appalling genocide. During my travels throughout this small country I found it difficult […]

I often receive some rather, ” we need it now!” requests from magazines and this piece, written for the July edition of Turkish Airlines was one of those. Its primarily a, ‘what to do’  article but might be helpful for any bees buzzing through this glorious city.   Welcome to Istanbul, this most  ancient of […]