The USA & Guns & Fairy Tales
16 December 2012 | Living
A weird relationship isn’t it? Underlined yet again by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut. The USA gun illustration is on the wall at the front of the ex-US Embassy in Tehran, Iran.
I live part of the year in Australia (annual deaths by guns...
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Nemesis – the end of the Pacific War
2 December 2012 | Media
Earlier this year I travelled up through the north Solomon Islands and joined a village boat across from Shortland Island to Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. I wrote it up as taking the Back Door to Bougainville, since it’s not an official entry point into the countr...
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Radio Congo
23 August 2012 | Media
What is it about the Congo which inspires such great writing? Whether it’s powerful novels (from Heart of Darkness via A Bend in the River to Poisonwood Bible), shocking history (King Leopold’s Ghost to In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz or Dancing in the Glory of Monsters)...
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Crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2
13 May 2012 | Transport
▲ On 5 March in Melbourne, Australia I got up at dawn and drove over to Port Melbourne to see the Queen Mary 2 arrive in dock. A couple of weeks earlier I’d stopped in at Rabaul on my way through Papua New Guinea, having arrived in the country by a very much smalle...
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The Devil’s Picnic
7 March 2012 | Media
Taras Grescoe travels the world looking for banned or disapproved of drinks, foods and substances. So he goes through a meal via aperitif, crackers, cheese, main course, a smoke, digestif, dessert, herbal tea and finally (and very final) a one-time-only nightcap
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