BARCELONA What surprised me most was the royal dockyards, and the replica of Don John of Austria’s galley, the Reial, that had led he Christian fleet to a decisive victory over the Ottomans at Lepanto. I had no idea it was there. Nobody had told me about it. They weren’t interested. They still aren’t.
BATIPAGLIA The Allies landed here to take Italy. American southern boys acted as if they were on a Turkey shoot, said Norman Lewis, trying to dodge their wild fire. Our pupils took to a restaurant for what they promised was the best pizza in all of Italy. They were not wrong.
BENENDEN For 20 years we took our turn on an acre of the High Weald, until falling leaves and gathering darkness drove us back to the city.
BERLIN A hard town where hookers look like Wags. Take a canal boat to Museum Island. Magnificent Babylonean ruins were brought here to save them from decay and destruction of the negligent Persians. The museum got a direct hit from Allied bombing.
BIELEFELD A small town in West Germany. My first night abroad. I had never spoken to a German before. Gutten aben, I said to the hotel receptionist. Gutten aben, he replied. It really works, this language business.
BLACK SEA At its exit, a fortified tower, Genoan built with Christian crosses on its walls. Beneath its gaze, Russian oil tankers slip by into the Bosphorus. Behind them, beyond the horizon in the widening sea, lie history’s half-forgotten cities: Odessa, Yalta, Sebastapol, Trebizond...
BOGNOR REGIS One sunny morning after a stormy night I looked out of my grandparents’ bedroom window and saw that the end of the pier had entirely disappeared.
BRAGA In the severe cathedral I bought a rosary, but I left it in a barber shop in Lisbon. For a while I worried that my luck might change.
BRINDISI The jumping off point for Greece. We had bowls of spaghetti alla vongole with olive-dark Lucia Santa Lucia and her friend. If I am not home by nine-thirty, she said, I will be thrown out of my house for ever. And my brothers will come to find you. We skipped dessert.
BRISTOL I could write a book about it: see www.bristolbook.co.uk
BRUGES We were put in a very smart hotel, but our resources were scarce. We smuggled in bottles of beer and ate bread beneath satin sheets.
BURGOS The town of El Cid has, in the royal monastery of Las Huelgas de Burgos, the most evocative medieval monastery in all Europe. Look at the kaftans worn in 1180 by Alfonso VIII and his English consort, Doña Leonor and their children: so beautifully woven with cescent moon patterns, they look as if they come from the East.
