Personal

In the week Gordon Brown dismissed one of his own supporters as bigoted, a respected broadcaster on why immigration is making him vote Tory for the first time.

Mail on Sunday

Almost 40 years ago, towards the end of the Edward Heath government, my landlady suddenly took me aside and invited me to have a drink with her in her sitting room.

Read more >

The Independent

The spirit in this recession seems to me better than in those of the past.

Having spent a good deal of my working life writing about sport I am all too aware of sudden joy and sudden gloom. Your team wins, even if by sheer fluke, and you are in heaven. Your team loses, despite dominating the match, and all is gloom.

Yet, brought up on such instant high and lows, what has struck me in recent weeks is how much we seem to have overdone the gloom as we enter a new decade.

Read more >

The Oldie

The afternoon I arrived in Badenweiler, the local Weinstube suddenly converted itself into a theatre. In walked a flaxen-haired actress and while I could not understand a word of the German she spoke, it was clear this was high drama. It turned out to be the story of ancient Romans in Badenweiler, now being used to promote the once great spa town.

Margrita Wahrer, playing the goddess Dianae Abnoba in the classic Roman style, bringing together the Roman god, Diana, with the Celtic one, Abnoba, acted out the story of Dianae Abnoba falling in love with a Roman as she took us round the town. Our tour ended at the Roman baths where the lovers bathed together before tragedy struck.

Click here to read more

The Mail on Sunday

Vienna, Austria

Half way to the Orient: Vienna was the third of Mihir's city stops

It was only as I stood on the bleak platform at Strasbourg station and saw ‘22.20 Orient-Express’ on the yellow railway timetable that I began to believe it was still possible to catch the train immortalised by Graham Greene and Agatha Christie. Only days before setting off, I’d caught Michael Palin on TV, arriving at Istanbul station during his latest travel series and confidently declaring: ‘There is no Orient-Express.’

Mention of the train today evokes images of the 21st Century re-creation of a vanished world – women who look as if they have stepped out from pages of Thirties Vogue, boarding carriages that exude opulence but never actually get to the Orient, terminating instead in Venice.

The Orient-Express I was catching was not that train but rather a regular, scheduled service that still uses the fabled name. Unlike Christie’s Hercule Poirot, however, I could not just get on a train in London and find myself in Istanbul a few days later. To make it all the way from London by rail, I had to construct my own version of the journey.

Read more >

Daily Telegraph

UNTIL yesterday, every time an Olympic official spoke of the magic of the Games, I reached for the delete button. Then for 15 minutes in a Roman street, holding the Olympic torch that is making its way to Turin for next year’s Winter Games, I experienced the magic and was overwhelmed.

The Olympic torch had arrived in Italy on Wednesday, was blessed by the Pope and yesterday was making its way through the city. Samsung, one of the main Olympic sponsors, had arranged for a number of people to be part of the city’s torch relay. I was given a number, 121, an Olympic uniform of jacket, trousers, gloves and winter cap, and a torch.

Read more >