It is far easier to explain to a three-year-old how babies are made than to explain the processes whereby bread or sugar appear on the table.

With our mad lust for Uniformity and a Higher Standard of Living and Expanding Markets, we go to a country like Afghanistan and cruelly try to jerk her forward two thousand years in two decades, giving no thought to the profound shock this must be to her national psychology.

On my tenth birthday a bicycle and an atlas coincided as presents and a few days later I decided to cycle to India.

The Irish have a flair for wringing from death the last drop of emotion and they do not quite understand those who react otherwise.

Sunnis consider Shias a pack of unwholesome fanatics and Shias consider Sunnis a gang of lukewarm no-goods - there's nothing like religion for spreading brotherly love!

one of the advantages of cycling is that it automatically prevents a journey from becoming an Expedition.

Buying a bicycle is a momentous event, akin to marriage: you are acquiring a partner.