Random Views

Fail to plan, they say, and plan to fail. I’m sure there’s some truth in that. As there is in most aphorisms. Not all of them of course. I h...

After four years of Nazi occupation, Paris was finally liberated by Allied armies on 24 August 1944. Units of the mythic French force, the ...

The woods behind our house are one of my greatest sources of pleasure from living where we are in Spain. And I’m finding myself fascinated b...

Picture a lecture theatre in an old and prestigious university. You know, wooden panelling, a lofty ceiling, rows of wooden benches reaching...

One of our favourite restaurants here in Valencia, the Refugio, has chosen to mark the door to the women’s toilet with a picture which is no...

Memory. It’s a curious organ. And one that we don’t use anything like enough. For outsiders visiting Spain, it’s often hard to remember th...

The soft glow of gaslights in Zagreb's Upper Town It’s curious being back in a country I haven’t visited for over half a century.  ...

There are more bridges in Hamburg than there are in the whole of Venice and Amsterdam. Taken together. How do I know that? I was told by a...

It’s early yet to start to pass a judgement on the present century. The last, on the other hand, deserves to be classified as the ‘Dark Cent...