The drive across the bleak but dramatically beautiful North Yorkshire moors, en route to the beach at Whitby is always quite hauntingly striking. Miles of softly undulating gorse and heather, where you can imagine a swirling mist suddenly descending and …

Life’s twists and turns, call them coincidences or serendipities never cease to amaze. In May I had stood by the harbor in Genoa, Italy, the birth place of the infamous explorer, Christopher Columbus. Three weeks later, quite unintentionally, I found myself …