23 JANUARY 1988, page 30

Craig Brown

WHENEVER something awful happens to me abroad, I feel a little distant from it and even amused by it, as if I am an actor playing Widow Twankey in a provincial pantomime,......

Susan Crosland

THE luxuriously converted VC-10 flew from Heathrow to Bermuda where Britan- nia was parked in the bay. Privacy ranks top of my pleasures: except for lunch and dinner, the......

Ranulph Fiennes

I REMEMBER the discomfort of parching thirst in the heat of the Dhofar nej'd, the nag of septic boils in the monsoon forests of Brunei, panic after breaking through Arctic......