Travelling through south-west Turkey, Maxine and Stephen don’t expect company. But a surprise encounter leads a local stranger to reveal a secret from his past that he has never told anyone before.
‘I’m sat passenger-side as Robert Macfarlane drives. We make our way to Orford Ness, a shingle spit fringing the Suffolk coastline, for our final seminar.’
‘Xinjiang is a Chinese invention. The name means “new territory”. It wipes clean the region’s history of kingdoms and tribal loyalties. Like New Zealand. New Mexico. New South Wales.’
What can you learn about Cecil Rhodes from his grave? Jean Fleming travels to Matobo National Park, Zimbabwe, to find out.
‘A Lithuanian Jew, writing in French; a philosopher overshadowed by his peers; Emmanuel Levinas could only be understood by visiting his hometown, where no one I asked seemed to know his name.’
In the remote borderlands between Russia and Georgia lives a community that has weathered the turbulent history of the Caucasus.