Month: May 2020

Hemingway and Cervantes are among the great writers who traverse Spain in pursuit of thrills, spills, detective sagas and sagacity • More literary trips … to Italy and France I grew up in Montreal – and London owns a big piece of my heart – but my home is Barcelona, where I’ve lived for 20…

Continue Reading

Last year Barcelona received 30 million visitors – now there are none. Emerging from Europe’s strictest coronavirus lockdown, how do its tourist-weary residents feel about getting their city back? For six weeks, the streets of Barcelona were deserted. Not a soul except the Deliveroo and Glovo riders and the occasional shopper, masked and gloved, making…

Continue Reading

Public urged to ‘take long hard look at your conscience’ after PM relaxes travel rules in England Coronavirus – latest global updates See all our coronavirus coverage Police in the Lake District have urged people to “take a long hard look at your own conscience” and stay away from the national park – despite the…

Continue Reading

Junk shops have boxes of postcards, many from this island – a traditional holiday favourite. The author of Postcard from the Past is planning a pilgrimage One reason I spend so much time wading through boxes of old postcards in junk shops is to snoop on holidays I can never take. On one side are…

Continue Reading

The playwright’s arduous journey to a Pacific island in Russia’s far east resulted in a non-fiction masterpiece Passport details Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, playwright, one of the greatest short-story writers in history and once-in-a-lifetime adventurer to Russia’s remote far east. Place and date of birthTaganrog, southern Russia, January 29, 1860. Continue reading…

Continue Reading