It may have passed you by that last week was the 50th Anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution. On 25 April 1974, suddenly and almost bloodlessly, the Estado Novo, a fascist dictatorship that had endured for 48 years, came to an end. I was a first-year student at The Queen's College Oxford at that time: the…
I refer to the so-called Festive Season. Myself, I quite enjoyed it - although it wasn't so good for Anne and her father, who both caught Norovirus. Somehow I avoided it. We went up to Wirral to see Mum before Christmas, then endured a long and complicated train journey home (storm damage to the overhead…
You may already have seen jaw-dropping pictures of medieval buildings perched on towering rocks. This is Meteora, in Northern Greece. Convent of Roussanou There are six surviving monasteries (and several ruined ones), four of which we visited over two days: namely, the Great Meteoron, Varlaam, Roussanou and Ayios Nikolaos Anapafsa. They appear to be impregnable…
I have been on holiday to Greece about a dozen times, beginning in 1971 when I was 16. I have enjoyed every single day. This one (June 2023) was no exception; in fact it may have been the best trip yet. Anne is a genius at arranging holidays She can sniff out great accommodation at…
My wife plays a Brahms intermezzo on the piano while I read the Times Literary Supplement. This sickening scene takes place at our holiday home in Charente. But there are worse things to be accused of than being middle-class. We returned from France on 27 February - and here we are again. They are forecasting…
We haven't been annihilated by Russian missiles. The invasion of Ukraine continues, with thousands killed and millions made refugees, but it all seems far away, certainly far enough to be forgotten on a sunny day in May. I have a feeling that British interest in this war is waning, as it becomes almost normal, a…
Brittany is (or was originally referred to as) La Petite Bretagne - did you know that? It was a place of refuge for Britons escaping from the Anglo-Saxon invaders of their homeland. Or maybe they just wanted to go somewhere a bit warmer, as millions of Britons still do. Having had a holiday home in…
Ten months between visits is a longer gap than we'd have liked. I know, many people have been suffering in various ways at this time so I shouldn't moan about it. The downside of having a holiday home is that you might arrive to find a leaking roof or a wasps' nest; well, you try…
Having lived in Wirral and Oxford until I was 22, I'd rarely travelled on the Tube until I started working in Upminster. Even then, I travelled mostly by bus or I walked. It took me a while to work out where the lines were connected, how to avoid the interchanges with the longest walks, and…
Of course there are more than a few. Ely, for example, which was an island back in the time of Hereward the Wake. Or the Isle of Dogs, more prosaically. But here I am referring to the gorgeous Isle of Purbeck. On the Bramble Bush Bay from Sandbanks to Shell Bay It does feel like…
The Wight Stuff 