Feature

Alnwick, United Kingdom “It’s been a bad year,” said the guide. “We’ve only enough ricin to kill 18,000 people. Normally it would be more. And strychnine? We cannot obtain the seed.” It was a drizzly day in the Alnwick Poison Garden, said to house the world’s most dangerous plants. The guide was fully in his stride. “Shame about the strychnine,” I noted facetiously. The guide nodded and wandered on. Strychnine is the product of the Strychnos nux-vomica plant, which is boring in appearance, but a favoured poison of Agatha Christie. A glug of strychnine[...]

Winchester, United Kingdom “Why are you here?” I asked the woman. We were attending the same course and it seemed polite to make conversation. “Ritual killings,” she said. There was nothing I could usefully reply. It was Winchester and once again I was a student. This time it was a world called osteoarchaeology, which is the study of ancient bones. Winchester is a good place for this, as the city, which was built in 70AD, was a Roman stronghold known as Venta Belgarum. The last Roman soldier left Britain in 407AD, but[...]

Troutbeck, United Kingdom “If the weather is like this,” he said, “then I’ll be walling. But it’s no use in the frost.” I looked at the Lakeland hill farmer, as I tried to extract a commitment from him. I wanted to establish if he would be building a dry-stone wall the next day, as I hoped to join him and learn about walling. An established delivery company had only just texted me to say my parcel would appear at 9.13 a.m. Surely a hill farmer could be as precise? But hill farmers[...]

Bodelwyddan, Clwyd, United Kingdom “If you want to hear a ghost, you need silence,” said Ifor, as we downed several pre-pandemic beers. We were in London, at a time when few had ever thought about coronavirus. “You’ll hear them best towards evening,” he added. Thanks to Ifor’s words, and a year later, I found myself in the gloaming beside a normally busy A-road, on the outskirts of a North Wales town called Bodelwyddan. The coronavirus was at full pitch, a second wave was underway, Wales had closed its borders to all but[...]

Tripoli, Lebanon As an orthopaedic surgeon who has undertaken more than a dozen ICRC missions to the Middle East, I was horrified to hear the organisation was proposing closure of its reconstructive programme in northern Lebanon. Surely, I thought, they must be joking? Sadly, it appears not. In 2014, ICRC opened its Weapon Traumatology and Training Centre (WTTC) in Tripoli to help the chronically war-wounded. It now admits patients from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and beyond. Its creation was a courageous stroke of genius by the ICRC of that time, as to[...]

Glenridding, Lake District, United Kingdom I have done it, at least they have done it for me. A little while ago I reached the zenith of my skiing career and became a member of the Lake District Ski Club. Moving to Cumbria had been a life decision, swopping London’s pollution for the purity of Lakeland air. The ongoing pandemic persuaded me, as I had no wish to spend a second lockdown period in London.  Yet the last thing I was expecting in Cumbria was a ski tow, clinging out-of-sight to a patch[...]