I last visited Birmingham for a piece back in the mists of time (well, 2009). It was a city on the cusp of something…’ Alex Larman checks in to the city’s luxury newcomer.

It was The Killing’s Sarah Lund, with her exemplary knitwear and sixth sense for scenting out serial killers and political conspiracies, who first made me fall for Copenhagen…

“By mid-April it’s hot, the wheat fields are golden and the hay has already been cut and is drying in huge round bales. The swallows are here too, swooping and diving around the coast.”

A riad is not exactly what you think it is. Or at least it’s not what I thought it was. I’ve always believed a riad to be a Moroccan house with an inner courtyard, but that’s a much less magical-sounding dar…

“Let me make one thing clear up front: if you’re looking for a calming retreat in the city centre, look away now. No one, dear reader, comes to Berns to sleep.”

“It springs, I feel, from a youth spent being forced to go to Scout camp.” Canvas, tent pegs, cold, wind, rain. Nick Hammond explains why camping really gets his goat…

I occasionally wonder whether Shakespeare was the first writer to have enjoyed the services of a PR. At the time, that is; the subsequent foundation of the RSC, amidst much related Bardolatry, has seen to it that Big Bill remains top literary dog in the English language…