Category: Adrift in Caledonia

Travel Writing: Having New Eyes

Travel Writing: Having New Eyes

Workshop 23rd May “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land,” wrote the Victorian novelist and essayist GK Chesterton. “It is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” What did he mean? When most of us are asked why we travel (leaving aside better…

Exploring Dangerous Truths

Great to see John Rae finally getting the recognition he deserves on his 200th birthday.  Never heard of him?  Me neither, until I came across the story of Britain’s most undervalued Arctic explorer a few years ago in Orkney. Born in Stromness, Dr Rae’s accomplishments tower above those of many of his more famous Victorian…

Backstage at TEDx Bucharest

Watch Nick’s talk on YouTube  Romania’s Palace of the Parliament is designed to intimidate. Twelve stories tall, with 1,100 rooms decked in a million cubic meters of Transylvanian marble, it was originally built by the Ceaușescu regime at a cost of 3 billion euros. I first took a tour of its vast, echoing halls about ten…

TEDx Talk: On Meaningful Risk

TEDx conference, Palace of the Parliament, Bucharest, Romania  November 2012 “My name is Nick Thorpe, I’m a writer and journalist, and I have a fascination with risk-taking. Despite my innate anxiety – or perhaps because of it – I seem compelled to stretch myself, force myself into the present moment. But what’s changed over the…

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