Canadian man of letters Robertson Davies gave me two precepts to which I fervently adhere. The first is: "Self-pity is commonly held to be despicable; it can also be a real…

When my boyfriend tells people that he proposed to me at the site of Napoleon’s tomb on St Helena Island, they smile as though humouring a macabre child. "Er, lovely," they say,…

It’s not surprising that a few decades ago South African mercenaries tried to stage a coup in the Seychelles. Who wouldn’t want ownership of a 115-island archipelago nestled in…