In the 1st century BC, present-day Uzbekistan stood on the important overland trade route that linked China with the Mediterranean. Alexander the Great conquered it; Islam was introduced by Arab invaders who were followed by the Persians, Turkic hordes, the warlord…
Travel
Himalayan Paradise – Kashmir and Ladakh
by Serena Fairfax • • 0 Comments
Himalayan Paradise – Kashmir and Ladakh “Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar, Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?…” Dubbed the Kashmiri love ode, when set to music, this became the most popular song …
Oman Odyssey
by Serena Fairfax • • 0 Comments
Nudging the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman, this country — stub your toe and you’ll strike oil— juxtaposing old and new, with its varied landscape of ravine, desert, mountain, ocean and wadi, advanced in just…
Romanian Rhapsody
by Serena Fairfax • • 0 Comments
When I mentioned a holiday in Romania, I faced incredulity and dark mutterings of “has she lost it?” A friend and I toured during the second half of July, our choice influenced by its hot and sunny location. We…
Eastbury Manor House, Barking
by Serena Fairfax • • 0 Comments
Eastbury Manor Hous This beguiling red -brick building stands on land that belonged to Barking Abbey from the seventh century to the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry V111. It’s located in east London in the Borough of Barking…
Tour of Lord’s
by Serena Fairfax • • 0 Comments
TOUR OF LORD’S Lord’s is to cricket as Santa Claus is to Christmas and in 2014 Lord’s celebrates its 200th anniversary. One of the most illustrious sports venues in the world, it was founded by Thomas Lord (23 November 1755…
Hever Castle
by Serena Fairfax • • 0 Comments
Hever Castle This is the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry V111, lecher and shrewd monarch who changed the course of England’s history and religion. When Spanish Princess Catharine of Aragon lost her husband Arthur…
Freud Museum -London
by Serena Fairfax • • 0 Comments
LONDON You’ve probably often heard the expression Freudian slip. No one knows who coined the phrase but it wasn’t Sigismund Freud the founding father of psychoanalysis who, in his book, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, published in 1901, concluded that…
Burmese Days
by Serena Fairfax • • 0 Comments
A holiday in Burma I’m in Katha where George Orwell set Burmese Days. It’s a bustling town, backed by distant mountains, on a bluff above the murky Irrawaddy where, days earlier, I’d glimpsed the rolling antics of a grey…
Watts Gallery
by Serena Fairfax • • 0 Comments
Hello everybody! ” I do not know you, nor have I ever seen the face of him who gave me my ‘Hope,’ but I am thankful for the chance of that day when it came to me in my sore…