Putin’s Pecker
After two years of personal and collective loss, for so many of us, we seemed at last to have started on a new, hopeful journey – until two weeks ago. As I write Russian divisions are surrounding Kyiv and Russian airstrikes have hit Dnipro, the central Ukrainian city that I visited in Pravda Ha Ha: […]
My second rock ‘n’ roll moment
Once in a life? No, twice in a life. At least. Long, long ago and fresh out of film school, I worked with David Bowie in Berlin. At the end of the happy Christmas dinner at a secluded restaurant in the Grunewald, I followed him downstairs to the huge, ceramic lavatory where – as we […]
A Journey with Jan Morris
A few days ago we lost the great, gifted writer Jan Morris. Today I’m honoured to remember her in the Guardian alongside Pico Iyer, Marcel Theroux, Kapka Kassabova, Sophy Robert and Hugh Thomson. I’d like to share with you also the memory of one particularly memorable jaunt together. “Jan is leaning on the bonnet, a boy racer […]
Sleepwalking into a Perilous New Age
With a few dozen days to go until the US election, and only weeks until the UK’s political insanity casts it adrift in the North Atlantic fog, the lies are coming thick and fast. In their hunger for power, our honourable leaders (ha ha) have lost all sense of responsibility to anyone other than themselves. […]
Coming Down to Earth: a traveller’s lockdown life
How are you doing? The pandemic has touched so many of our lives. I hope that you and yours have suffered nothing more than the inconvenience of the lockdown, but of course that’s not the case for all of us. Over these homebound weeks, I’ve been looking out of my study window. Beyond the horizon […]
As the Wheels Turn: cycling through our ‘post-truth’ age
Cycling moves me. When I first came to the UK, my bicycle gave me a sense of belonging in my adopted home. I belted up Knightsbridge in rush hour, wheeled and wove through Piccadilly’s traffic, found the nerve to tackle Marble Arch. Another bicycle then gave me Berlin, opening a new city for me, making […]
Pravda and Putin in America
Happy New Year, und einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr. Why the German? Because I’ve just learned that “Pravda Ha Ha” will be published in Germany in September by Karl Rauch Verlag, the publisher of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (“Night Flight”, “Wind, Sand and Stars” and “The Little Prince”). Hence it’s no wonder that my thoughts […]
Bowie in Berlin
It’s Christmas Day in Berlin in 1977. Seated at the table are David Bowie and the film-maker David Hemmings, along with various partners, children and add-ons like me. At a secluded restaurant in the Grunewald, the deep and dark urban forest that hugs the city’s western fringe, we eat and drink too much and Bowie […]
Pravda Ha Ha: Truth, Lies and the End of Europe
If you could, which contemporary politician would you ask to explain himself? Might you ask Donald Trump how he can sleep at night? Would you ask some of the UK party leaders how they can bring themselves to tell such blatant porkies? I’d like to ask Vladimir Putin why – after the fall of the […]
Berlin: Imagine a City
Why are we drawn to certain cities? Perhaps because of a story read in childhood. Or a chance teenage meeting. Or simply because the place touches us, embodying in its tribes, towers and history an aspect of our understanding of what it means to be human. Paris is about romantic love. Lourdes equates with devotion. […]