The internet can turn the relationship between writer and reader into a two-way street. You can click here to email me a question, join a travel writing workshop in London, Dublin or Paris and just sign on to my mailing list. You can check out the FAQs and hot links. Click on the left-hand links for my biography and an article 'On Travel Writing'. Plus My-Family-and-Other-Characters photo gallery, where you can meet some of the two- and four-legged beings who populate my pages, programmes and life. This site is here for you - for readers, listeners, travellers and writers. I'd like to know what you think about my approach to travel writing, to characters real and invented and to the thin line which I tread between fact and fiction. I depend on your input. Also what do you think of this site? What else would you like to see here?

Remember to subscribe to my mailing list (see above) to receive the newsletter. (Don't worry, the list is private and I won't give out your name to the junkmailers!). Please check out the FAQs below before submitting a question. 


When did you start to write?
I always wrote. I don't remember a time when I didn't: short stories, home movies, student newspapers, vapid feature films and busted blockbusters. In 1989 I submitted a story on Prague to the 'Independent' newspaper's first ever travel writing competition and won. That led to a commission to write a book on eastern Europe, the week before the Berlin Wall fell. Since then I haven't stop travelling - except when I'm writing.

How do you write?
Six days a week, when I have a book on the go. I write long-hand in the morning, then edit the scribbles on my steam-powered Mac in the afternoon. Heart then head. I eat too many Hobnobs, drink too much tea and write six or seven drafts.

Which book and film have influenced you most?
'A Time of Gifts', Patrick Leigh Fermor's fluent, exotic account of his youthful journey from London to Constantinople, published more than 40 years after the event. It is a book that makes everything seem possible. And 'Mary Poppins', for its healthy disregard for authority, especially bankers, its promotion of women's rights and its emphasis on the role of fantasy.

Do you dream about travelling?
Sure, that's how it's done.

Do you ever forget your toothbrush?
Yes, but I never leave home without my lucky Tamworth pig's foot.

Is travel writing a dying genre?
Well obviously, ever since Homer wrote 'The Odyssey'. Click to 'On Travel Writing' (left hand links).

How can I find out about your appearances and programmes?
Details of all up-coming events are included in the newsletter. If you are on my mailing list, you'll receive it every month or so.

Will you sign my book?
With pleasure. Just come along to a reading or send it to me via either of my UK publishers: Viking-Penguin, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL or IB Tauris, 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU.

Who is your agent?
Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN tel: 020 7221 3717

Will you read my manuscript?
If I say yes I'll never get any work done. Sorry, no.

Will you reply to my emails?
Almost certainly - as long as they are not rude or boring.

What would you like your epitaph to say?
He believed in wonders. Poor sod.

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