(wrote Laura Freeman in the Times last Monday). Three of them were in London. Travelling Companion and I resolved, this Saturday afternoon, to go and see them. But A year in Normandie, at the Serpe…

Bookseller, Palermo, 2025 Last year I read lots of good books, many recommended by Friends and Family. Novels Laurence Block, The burglar in the rye, 1999 I reread the five or six of these funny Ne…

During my recent visit to Taiwan I’d intended to get a ferry to the Matsu islands. I cancelled it because of a forecast typhoon in the Taiwan Strait and went instead for a bike ride on the main isl…

I have a history degree and am a historian in my heart of hearts. As far as my career is concerned, though, I became a transport person at Reading borough council in 1989. I was one of those for fi…

Last week I took a three day bike ride east from Brussels to Liège (Wallonia) via Leuven, Aarschot, Diest, Hasselt (Flanders) and Maastricht (Netherlands). It took me an hour to get out of Brussels…

Exclusive: Industry delegates outnumbered climate experts by 14 to one at recent ICAO meeting, thinktank says

More than 20 airports across the UK have expansion plans, which will result in a combined increase of 60%+ capacity. More flights means more emissions, at a time when we should be doing everything we…

When rear admiral Horatio Nelson escorted the royal family of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies away to safety, from Naples in December 1798*, it was to Palermo that his ship carried them. Nelson rem…

Warships at the time of the revolutionary wars took their position each day at noon. At that time, with the sun at its highest point, they could use a sextant to work out their latitude. At noon on…

Is there space for a further Channel Tunnel operator at the Temple Mills depot off the HS1 line at Stratford? The issue rumbles on, with ORR expected to make a decision on the issue by this autumn acc...

This is the strait of Messina, between Sicily and the toe of Italy. In 1798 Sicily was part of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, broadly sympathetic to Britain while afraid of the French forces furt…

Who are the Americans?  Great writers and photographers have sought to find out and depict this diverse nation of 300m people. Here's my take

The military tide may have turned against Putin.

This is the bay of Naples, the city of Ferdinand IV, Bourbon King of the Two Sicilies. Ferdinand was a boor (in her novel The volcano lover, Susan Sontag depicts him as forcing Sir William Hamilton…

For a slightly more adventurous holiday, how about a ferry and train combo to the Mediterranean island of Corsica? The Gilbert family tells us how.