I followed the last passengers down to the door of the aircraft and started talking to the cabin crew while the final checks were being...

Breakfast around the Middle East is usually a washout. Two places I’ve enjoyed it have been the Hotel Baron in Aleppo and over the border...

I saw him one last time this morning, before closing the back door and heading off to work, the little Gentleman in the Red Waistcoat,...

Have you ever wanted to kick a child in the arse so hard, that like that cow, he’d fly up over the moon? Well, I was giving it serious...

I strode into the office out of a sudden autumn squall, chewing my way through the last mouthfuls of my bun. Budden bounced up out of...

I had a proper job once. A job that involved the barking of orders, the kicking of arses and of, well, generally getting stuff done,...

0420. Twenty-past four in the morning. Four-twenty a.m. Not even sparrow-fart. Awake. Or am I dreaming I'm awake. The fish pie was tasty...

Syria, early January, out in the Dead Cities; Bara, Sergiopolis, Apamea. The long Cold War of the Classical World had turned hot and the...

'Glad you got off your fizzer Sven'. 'Which one Senior?' 'The "casual sexism" one' 'Oh that one'. 'How did you manage it?' 'I convinced...

I was in the bar with a cocktail and some Hounslow tapas when Blunt Dave dropped a newspaper on my pint of light and bitter spilling my...

'Boing. Boiing. Boiiing. Boiiing'. You can be quite expressive with a 20' perspex ruler, bouncing it on the edge of your desk at...

I may have mentioned that I was born into, grew up in, worked, and grew old in the aviation business and have been lucky to have...

My (maternal) grandfather was part of the army of occupation in the old Ottoman Empire after WWI. He survived the Western Front, and was...

I'd had a pleasant afternoon of tea and hash with the Sufis of Damascus talking quantum mechanics and the unfixed nature of history, but...

'The island-valley of Avilion, Where falls not hail or rain or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadowed, happy,...

Far, far from the swagger of Monument Valley; far from the abstract patterns of Bryce, far from the twisted tortured sculptures of Zion...

I bought my first book on Greek history as a small boy in a second-hand bookshop in Saffron Walden. Those great nodding crests hooked me...

My grandfather used to read a couple of pages from the Oxford English Dictionary every day throughout his retirement, telling anyone who...

I tend to approach books like this with either a degree of trepidation or resignation. As a Welshman, I have had a lifetime of smiling...

Well, we’ve had a chance for a bit of a break halfway along the Walls; there is after all, rather a lot of them to cover. A chance to...