Exmoor I am heading to Exmoor for the first time since I was last there in 1977 — and as the train pulls into Tiverton Parkway station my childhood rises back up at me like ground rush. We head north and pass Ravenswood, the gothic building where I spent six years of my life when
Bexhill-on-Sea My Aunt Beryl taught me to love books and paintings. When I’m at a loose end in London, lonely, or even rather boozed up, I still nip into one of the galleries she raised me on to say hello to pictures that have been my lifelong friends. Out of an envelope fell an original
Kenya I stood under huge skies in the open country of our farm in northern Kenya and, after months of London lockdown, I remembered those Japanese tourists I had once seen, weeping with wonder at the sight of Africa’s savannah after their lives imprisoned in cities. I’ve been savouring every little detail of home since
London Simon, proprietor of the sex shop opposite our Covid-19 testing centre in Soho, insisted on popping a pack of Sildenafil in my top pocket each time I passed his ribbon curtains. ‘Have a lovely weekend,’ he’d say kindly. For several weeks we occupied the delightful Boulevard Theatre at the end of Berwick Street. With
As we all know by now, the pandemic distorts time like a concertina. Life before March is a world that seems too distant, an image viewed down a telescope held the wrong way — yet there are moments when the months retract into almost hours. We are still castaways in London, still waiting for the
I used to live in Mogadishu for months at a time, cooped up in compounds behind fortified walls. Venturing on to the streets meant a flak jacket, escort vehicle bristling with guns, chain-smoking as we zoomed through smashed districts, militias, ambushes and roadside bombs. Despite the incarceration, Somalia gave me some of my happiest memories.
I keep thinking what I’ll do when we regain our liberty — and I picture that beer at the end of Ice Cold in Alex, when after surviving his trek through the Sahara, a sweaty John Mills traces his finger up the frosted schooner, drinks the golden liquid down in one and says: ‘Worth waiting
Laikipia The sweetest sound to me now is the dawn chorus of birdsong at home on the farm. I lay awake in bed and listened, as a light rain fell on the coconut thatch above me. When I walked out into the garden the three dogs burst out of the house to go off exploring.
Africa ‘Ah, Africa,’ the French scientist sighed contentedly. This was 1995 and all around us was an Ebola epidemic ravaging Kikwit, a village in what they now call the Democratic Republic of Congo. ‘No lawyers to sue us!’ I had just asked him why doctors in the local hospital ward had shown me Ebola
Death and failure are more integral to farming than any other experience that I’ve witnessed in my life. Some things are out of our hands — like the plagues of desert locusts heading our way from Ethiopia, promising to devour all our green pastures within hours of their arrival. Other things are within our power,
Addis Ababa airport This morning I caught a connecting flight via Addis Ababa’s Bole airport. For me this place has always been like a magical wardrobe, leading me towards different adventures across Africa. Today Ethiopia is the world’s fastest-growing economy and Bole is a continental crossroads, teeming with religious pilgrims, wandering tourists, African traders
Laikipia After a year of peace and plentiful rain, my farm in Kenya is fantastic. Peace, rain — leave a farmer alone and he can just get on with growing food for Africa. So my thoughts are with my fellow farmers Gary and Jo Hensman, both in their seventies, who last month were chased
Kenya At his house on Kenya’s coast our neighbour Paul Spicer kept a photograph of himself as quite a young man stepping out with his boss Tiny Rowland, our founding President Jomo Kenyatta and 1970s MI6 chief Sir John Ogilvy Rennie (known as ‘C’). In the image they are all sharply dressed — by
Kenya ‘In the past months the people of Uganda have been following with sorrow the alarming economic crisis befalling on Britain,’ Uganda’s President Idi Amin telegrammed the Queen in 1973. ‘The sad fact is that it is the ordinary British citizen who is suffering the most… I’m sending a cargo ship full of bananas.’
Malindi I could measure my whole life in the summers I’ve spent on the beach in front of our family’s seaside house on Kenya’s north coast. Walking along the white sand, eyes down among the flotsam, seaweed, cuttlebones and ghost crabs, for decades I have been finding shards of blue and white porcelain washed
Laikipia All across the north the ritual bulls have already been slaughtered. I am waiting for the invitation from our Samburu neighbours to set off on a walk into the forested hills with my boy Rider to visit the great thorn enclosures where thousands of youths are to be circumcised. Drought in the low
Laikipia, Kenya On 5 April this year, my neighbour Torrie’s sister Vicki died during an operation in a Nairobi hospital. Torrie, who is the livestock manager on the next-door ranch of Loisaba, adored her and was terribly sad, as was Don, her partner for 40 years. To me, Torrie resembles a thin Dylan Thomas
Laikipia, Kenya A cheetah perched in the front seat of your gold-plated Lamborghini. Stick that on Instagram in Saudi Arabia and it’s the height of cool. Or a cheetah in bed with your wife in Dubai. The latest fashion among rich Arabs is buying cheetah cubs smuggled out of Africa to boast about on
Laikipia, Kenya ‘An elephant has fallen over,’ said the man running up to me. My first thought was that poachers had killed the animal for its tusks. ‘Has it been shot?’ The man shrugged. ‘He was eating leaves, then he just fell over.’ As Claire and I made our way to the place, I
East Africa The late Michael Meacher represented almost everything I loathe in a politician. Before his death in 2015, this veteran Labour MP was Jeremy Corbyn’s ardent fan. He had served under Wilson and Callaghan and he was so left-wing he earned the nickname Tony Benn’s ‘vicar on earth’. Yet when I compare Michael
