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In 2009, when I interviewed Christopher Hitchens in anticipation of his appearance at the inaugural Festival of Dangerous Ideas, I used our last ten minutes together to ask his opinion of, among other things, Australian journalist John Pilger. “I remember
Colin Thubron’s The Amur River begins with the Mongolian authorities warning him that his trip is ill-advised. They’re talking specifically about his plan to enter the country’s rugged Khentii Mountains on horseback, though what he has in mind is much
The former British hill station of Mussoorie, in the foothills of the Himalayas, affords the visitor two extraordinary views. Facing south, one takes in the seemingly endless Doon Valley, lit up at night by the city of Dehradun. That city
At the beginning of William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire, the award-winning Scottish historian states plainly the thesis of his latest work: that the Company’s “military conquest, subjugation and plunder
In 1969, Jimi Hendrix visited Essaouira, Morocco, a blue-and-white-washed village on the country’s Atlantic coast. Tales have been told of his visit ever since: that he ate here and stayed there, that he nearly bought the nearby town of Diabat,
When Australian journalist David Hirst died in 2013, he was roundly celebrated, in this newspaper and others, as one of the few mainstream commentators to have predicted and warned against the 2008 financial crisis. His Fairfax column Planet Wall Street
Even before I arrived in Varanasi, I knew I wanted to reread the Varanasi section of Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. A freelance writer is always on the lookout for potential story ideas that will allow him
It has been a good year for the obituarists among us. I suppose every year is, when you think about it, though it nevertheless seems that there have been more obituaries than usual lately, at least within my own particular