Feature

Tacloban, Phillipines There is something about disasters; by definition they come at the most unexpected time. For me, when summoned to join the United Kingdom’s Disaster Emergency Response, I have so often been up a mountain. For the Great Earthquake of Kashmir I was in the Peaks, for Java it was Snowdon, for Haiti it was…. okay so here goes…in the bath, for Libya it was Chamonix and for the Philippines I was at the top of the Lake District’s Pike of Stickle. It was November 2013 and my mobile let out[...]

Istanbul, Turkey I knew there was trouble when I smelt the burning rubber, the smoke billowing from the darkened, half derelict room. This was Taksim Square in June 2013, the heart of Istanbul, and once a popular resting place to escape the organised yet crazy chaos of the ancient city of Constantinople. Someone had set tyres alight, but within seconds I saw the young masked man extinguish the flames with a properly handled extinguisher. The starting point was a collection of sycamore trees that the government threatened to fell to make room[...]