A short drive from bustling (and seedy) downtown Kingston, on a spit of land reaching out into the sea, lies the small and slightly shabby fishing community of Port Royal. Today it is hard to imagine that this secluded backwater was once described as ‘the richest and wickedest city in the world’. But its sleepy demeanour masks a notorious past.
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The former leaders of North Korea have almost mythological status in the country: the Eternal President and Great Leader Kim Il Sung, and his son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. As such, their birthplaces have become pilgrimage sites for their adoring people, and compulsory stops for visitors to the country.
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What better position for a monument to one of the country’s greatest seamen than this, high above the mouth of the Tyne with a view out to sea? Yet in many ways Collingwood is something of a forgotten hero, barely known outside his native North East.
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Leipzig’s Runde Ecke (‘Round Corner’) building was originally constructed for an insurance company in the early 20th century. But this attractive stone building was to assume a much darker role, and in time to play an important part in the history not just of this city but of the whole of Germany.
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One of the most memorable and striking sights along the Northumberland coast is Dunstanburgh Castle. Its ruins stand on a remote headland, reached by a beautiful coastal walk from the nearby village of Craster. It is this distance from any other building, any other sign of human habitation, that makes Dunstanburgh seem rather magical.
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Sofia is the only city in Europe where you will find places of worship for four major religions almost within sight of each other. Clustered in the vicinity of its Square of Tolerance are: an Eastern Orthodox church; a Roman Catholic cathedral; a mosque and a synagogue. This embodies the pride that Bulgarians have in their history of religious tolerance. Unlike some other countries in the region, its different faith communities have tended to coexist peacefully.
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On the southern outskirts of the small fishing town of Tarrafel on Santiago, one of the Cape Verde Islands, is a haunting sight. Now a museum, this former concentration camp, also known as Campo da Morte Lenta, commemorates a darker time for the islands, under Portuguese rule.
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There is something about a tale of a deserted city that tugs at the imagination. Here on this rocky ridge near Agra in Uttar Pradesh, the third Mughal emperor Akbar built a new capital: the walled city of Fatehpur Sikri, the ‘City of Victory’. But soon after its completion he abandoned his great city due to a lack of water at the site.
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The barons of early 13th century England would have agreed with A. A. Milne (the creator of Winnie the Pooh) that 'King John was not a good man'. In 1215 England was in political turmoil. King John had become vastly unpopular; his disagreements with the Pope over the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury led to a papal interdict against the country and the king’s excommunication, while the imposition of high taxes to fund the war with France led to mounting anger.
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'I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.' With this sentence Karen Blixen opens her account of life on a coffee plantation just outside Nairobi. It was the 1920s, and this was British East Africa, not Kenya - part of the (by then fading) British Empire. The book presents a vivid, if at times uncomfortable, picture of African colonial life and the relationships between colonists and native inhabitants.
