I’ve just been asked to submit entries on behalf of the Telegraph for a travel writing competition run by the Central America Tourism Promotion Agency, CATA. The winner will earn a return trip to Costa Rica.
  Now, if a region like Costa Rica can offer such a prize, how come better-off places can’t? There seems […]

Family gatherings aren’t what they were, Roger Mummert complains in today’s New York Times. He and his wife used to cook pots of pasta and dispense lemon tea. These days their guests expect them to print PDFs, facilitate Facebook updates and generally run an internet cafe.

The Vatican is starting charter flights to the most important Catholic shrines around the world, according to Reuters. I wonder what the Anglican Bishop of London, who said last year that flying was “a symptom of sin”, will have to say about that?

I’m amazed he made it to 94. Over the past five or six years I’ve come within inches of finishing him off. I would be coming out of the gents at the Telegraph and he, not so nimble on his feet as he used to be, coming in. Two or three times a very heavy […]

Dr Bernard Lamb, a tutor at Imperial College London, was so shocked by the poor spelling, punctuation and grammar of the students on his genetics course that he started logging their mistakes. According to The Observer, he plans to publish them in the journal of the Queen’s English Society.
  I understand how he feels. I […]

More “green” opportunism from the tellingly named Gosh PR, a company charged with selling Brighton to tourists. In an email it says: “According to Lonely Planet’s recent Pulse Survey, travellers worldwide are boycotting flying with 70% opting to travel in a ‘low impact way’ by catching a bus or train. Forget Europe and help to […]