Quotes from Hugh Thomson

To the traditional traveller—let alone travel writer—this might seem absurd. The whole point of travel is to go deep. To spend time in a place, to get under its skin. How can one possibly appreciate what makes a city or a country tick in a bare ten hours

Only in the late eighteenth century, with Burke and his theory of the sublime, Wordsworth and his mountains, Rousseau and his thoughts on Nature, did any sense of the romantic appeal of such wilderness areas begin in Europe. But having discovered such a sensibility ourselves, there has always been a reluctance to ascribe it to any other culture, let alone one which might have come to it before us.

why as a society we are often so cruel or oblivious to the elderly. Why do we find it so easy to make jokes about them, or ignore them? Is it because we fear what they represent: our own ageing and approaching death?

As ever, only a small fraction of

the books or, even better, one of my films: 'I'll take a few questions after the screening.' The lecturer's job is not arduous—a couple of hours

And in a way, what could be more rock and roll than lying around on deck being served caviar and champagne off a surfboard? If Keith Moon had lived long enough, he'd have loved it. Although come to that, he might have tried to push the mini-golf buggy into the pool.