Stranded (now and then)
She was there, on the other side of the huge round pond, a sort of lagoon separated from the sea [...]
Enemy of your enemy
The modest amount of insight I have come to acquire about the tortured history of Afghanistan in recent decades I [...]
Journalists in the crosshairs
One cannot be worried enough about the future of journalism. The profession is becoming a riskier business than ever before, [...]
The “homecoming” that wasn’t
Before the Euro 2020 final that pitted England against Italy, English fans upped a chant that in the days before [...]
From one Down Under to another
Ages ago, one of the features in the still popular "Reader’s Digest" magazine was a feature called “My most unforgettable [...]
Life before lenses
It took me the first twelve years of my life to discover glasses, or at least their full utility. Not [...]
The English on the hill
Thirty years ago, on March 8, 1991, the eminent English food writer Patience Gray published “South to the Salento,”for a [...]
The Hungarian connection
As a youth in the 1960s, I became intoxicated with listening to the wireless, as radio was called in its [...]
My debt to Ol’ Blue Eyes
When you learn a foreign language by teaching yourself, what you miss the most is the possibility of speaking in [...]
How fragile we are
From the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were hints in the press and suspicion in the medical community [...]
The making of a translator
Things we long for sometimes seem to come true by chance. Or maybe it is a question of choice and [...]
How green was my valley
This is a cautionary tale, though it may not seem like one at first. In fact, at first it will [...]