My recent book, A Biography of Story, A Brief History of Humanity is described on the cover as ‘an entertaining cultural history’ and indeed, it is written in a storytelling style for the general reader. But this story has a
Legendary Travellers 4: Anton Chekhov

Where would a fit 30-year-old bachelor with a flourishing medical practice and a successful writing career choose to spend eight months travelling in the 19th century? For anyone but Chekhov, the answer would probably be Paris. He chose Sakhalin Island
Legendary Travellers 3: Hiking with Haiku

It wasn’t that Bashō travelled widely, but that he journeyed deeply. Although he walked 800 kilometres on his second trip, he stayed within his own country – Japan. Inland travel was difficult and hazardous in the 17th century –
Legendary Travellers 2: Journey to Lhasa

Legendary Travellers:2: Journey to Lhasa Dressed as a beggar, a revolver concealed in her bodice, fifty-four-year-old Madame Alexandra David-Neel walked into Lhasa, the holy city of a country forbidden to foreigners. By her side strolled Yongden, a young Sikkimese monk
Legendary Travellers: Al-Mas’udi

We were ‘global’ thousands of years before air travel and international corporations, or as far as the ‘globe’ was known which amounts to the same thing in courage and curiosity. I’ve been away from the blog for a while, working