From today's Independent on Sunday - 'What’s so good about holidaying abroad?'

Essentially a super-sized puff for 'Sod Abroad' it also provides some (I am sure) interesting background on how I came to write the book..

Plus, it reveals some harrowing insights into my painstaking research:

Before I went on that holiday I had just assumed I didn't like camping. Now I know. Some magical alchemy about getting enough tents together in one place attracts rain like a picnic attracts wasps. It poured for two weeks, pausing only to allow a sinister fog to roll in from the sea every breakfast. To make the situation even more comical our daughter had just reached that sofa-surfing stage, where a child is almost ready to walk but needs regularly spaced items of furniture as staging posts. Solid pieces of furniture aren't easy to come by on a campsite, and as a consequence every adult in the party was pressed into service as an emergency baby-walker, resulting in long-term lumbar damage that was in no way exacerbated by having to sleep on a thin foam mattress.

Finally, and I'm sure you'll see this as a bonus, there's a nice picture of me reclining on my sofa and reading the splendid (and highly recommended) My Little Armalite