There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.

The Occident has never found it easy to grasp the strange netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist in a realm overlaid our own.

Lured by the wilderness, and by the chance of spotting rare desert elephants, a few intrepid tourists make their way to the Skeleton Coast each year. It's just about as remote as any tourist destination on earth, but one that pays fabulous dividends.

The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.

As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.

To Succeed, you must reach for the stars, and let your imagination find its own path

My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.