Fault Lines is an eBook that was created to raise money for the Red Cross’s relief efforts in Japan and New Zealand. It was ‘curated’ by Matt Granfield in just over a week and I’m honoured that my contribution, The Cherry Tree, opens the anthology. The book is a collection of new, never-before published writing  Read more »

The eBook version of my journey from Milan to Rome on a ’61 Vespa is now available on Amazon worldwide. It’s currently only available as a Kindle book, but with the vast range of free reading apps that Amazon offer you’ll be able to read it on any device you own. To download your version  Read more »

The eBook version of my journey from Cape Town to Cairo is now available on Amazon worldwide. It’s currently only available as a Kindle book, but with the vast range of free reading apps that Amazon offer you’ll be able to read it on any device you own. To download your version simply follow the  Read more »

The eBook version of my journey from London to Sydney is now available on Amazon worldwide. It’s currently only available as a Kindle book, but with the vast range of free reading apps that Amazon offer you’ll be able to read it on any device you own. To download your version simply follow the links  Read more »

The rubbish weather over Easter gave me the chance to finally read a book I’d given a cover quote for. It’s called African Brew Ha-Ha and thankfully it lived up to the promise of the sample chapters I’d been sent. That’s the tricky thing about giving cover quotes, you see. Unless it has been published  Read more »

I got an email from John Sjoholm the other day. He’d bought himself a Kindle and was wondering if any of my books were available as eBooks. The short answer is no. It seems my publishers are determined to follow the lead of the music industry and put their heads in the sand, hoping the  Read more »

It always makes me laugh when I see one of those columns where they ask someone who they’d like to sit next to on a plane or at a dinner party and the person nominates Bill Bryson. I’ve sat next to (or near) Bill at two dinners and didn’t hear a peep out of him  Read more »

Just reading Stuart Maconie’s new book Adventure on the High Teas. It’s about his search for Middle England, a sequel to his immensely popular book about the north called Pies and Prejudice. I’ve just started the book – so I’ll reserve judgment. But I was bemused by his claim at the start of Chapter 2  Read more »

I’ve got a story in a new Lonely Planet anthology called ‘Flightless: Incredible Journeys without leaving the ground.’ It’s called ‘The Forty Year Old (Vespa) Virgin’ so no prizes for guessing what it’s about. And because it’s the first story in the book you can read most of it using the ‘Search Inside’ feature on  Read more »

I’ve just been reading Blood River by Tim Butcher. It’s an account of the author’s journey through the Congo following in the footsteps of Henry Morton Stanley. Tim is a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph (UK) so it is extremely well-researched and full of interesting stuff on the history of this troubled corner of  Read more »