Peregrinations

So many of the novels I've read, from Charles Dickens to Mick Herron, paint the streets of London in sad, dreary colors not meant to give you a sense of wonder unless it is who is lurking around the next corner.

I have been there a few times, and each time it has presented itself, whether in full color or in shades of rain, as a place of wonder. A city where anything might happen. One might even, as I outline in my novel Ghosts of the Heart, think one sees ghosts. Read more about London

I don’t believe in God. That is to say, I don’t believe in the actual, physical existence of a deity who “lives” somewhere up above and who is responsible for all creation.

But let me walk into any sacred space with a painted or tiled ceiling, and I am hooked.

No wonder I spent some time alone in a pew in this little church in the town of Axbridge, in England, just looking up.

Read more about Just Look Up

It was September of 2005. George Bush was President. Hurricane Katrina had just devastated New Orleans. I had just checked into St. John’s Croft, a Queen Anne era B&B in Winchester, England, and turned on the BBC in my room, where I heard an interview in which Bush claimed to have seen the devastation for himself from a helicopter. “I can see that it is worth more than one day’s attention.” More video of New Orleans under water. Reports of bodies floating in the streets. Mayhem in the Superdome. Read more about A Knight in Winchester

My first real castle, turned out indeed to be a moated grange. Read more about The Moated Grange

Yes. It's only a country road. I have featured it in these pages before. But I stopped the car as soon as I turned into it. Because as far as I was concerned, the light at the end of the road opened into Hobbiton. Read more about Country Road

Just an ordinary bucolic English scene – green fields and woodlands stretching into the distance. “This green and pleasant land,” of Blake’s poem.

There’s little here to mark the spot where William of Normandy overthrew the English King Harold, thereby changing the course of Western Civilization from that time to this. Read more about Visions

The sign said Romney Marsh, so I turned into it. I had a vague memory that Romney Marsh was where Pip encountered Magwitch in the opening scenes of Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. Google research does not, however, bear this out. Not knowing that yet, I persevered. Read more about The Old Church

A cloud of blue butterflies hovered just beyond the Astra's bonnet. Beyond them rose the famous White Cliffs. This was a day for fresh air and blue skies. No ghosts allowed. The conversation with her mother already sounded like something she's made up. Sophie clicked a picture of the cliffs, locked the car and went to investigate a nearby information kiosk. Read more about Between Cliffs and Channel

A Canterbury Tale Read more about A Canterbury Tale