Guardian of the house
This is my very own Green Man, who protects my garden against evil spirits and malignant fairies. The spate of burglaries we experienced in this street also abruptly came to […]
Author Archives: theromantictraveller
Assignations and midnight daggers in Venice
Venice always reminds me of Poe’s ‘The Assignation’ and ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, and all the other dark, seductive and quite beautiful tales I read as a young man, and […]
A touch of magic at Seaton Sluice
These fresh, colourful figures seem to embody the spirit of the sea up here in the wild, rugged and beautiful north of England. I don’t know why I bothered to […]
Overacting in a Jam Jar
I have to put a plug in here for a charming little cinema that recently opened in Whitley Bay, which for those of you unfamiliar with the UK layout is […]
Constantine’s Column – battered but defiant
One of Istanbul’s most venerable monuments is the Column of Constantine. It’s called the Hooped Column locally, for obvious reasons, and this in Turkish (Cemberlitas – Chem-ber-lee-tash) gives its name […]
The Golden Gate of Byzantium
I was thrilled, after taking the old train along the Marmara shore to Yedikule (Seven Towers), to find myself standing before the legendary Golden Gate of Byzantium. It looks sadly […]
Eros strikes again in London
Piccadilly Circus is at the throbbing heart of London and for years visitors have crowded under the statue of Eros, which was originally designed as an angel of mercy but […]
Side by Side by Apollo
Side has become a victim of its own popularity. You reach it by driving down a 3km asphalt road off the main Antalya-Alanya coast road on Turkey’s south coast, heading […]
Armstrong’s Cragside – almost parallel lives
William Armstrong is my favourite eminent Victorian inventor, maybe because he was a Geordie like myself, born in Newcastle in 1810. His house at Cragside – the house where modern […]
Fleeting time
I spent some of the best Friday evenings of my life walking home from London Bridge where I worked back to my flat in Pimlico in the 1980s. The route […]
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