Where do you live and why?
In a small mansion block in Brook Green. It’s perfect for my wife and I and our five-year-old daughter Honor who only has a five-minute walk to school.
In your 20-something years as a foreign correspondent, what was the most personally interesting conflict you reported on?
It sounds like a weird thing to say but everyone has their favourite war. Mine was the Balkans. It was a particularly intense experience, perhaps because it was European and easier to comprehend. For us journalists it also brought a rare satisfaction. For once the words we wrote and the images we recorded made a difference and forced an international intervention.
Where is the most productive place for you to write?
I work in our front room, listening to the thwack of balls from the tennis courts – the standard is incredibly good – and good old Rocco instructing his young pupils.
What is your favourite way to relax at home?
Sitting around drinking wine and boring my wife, Henrietta.
Have you got into any particularly sticky situations while reporting? And how did you get out of them?
I was covering a huge Shia religious festival in Karbala, Iraq in 2004 when a wave of Sunni suicide bombers started blowing themselves up. There was mass panic and I was immediately surrounded by a mob who accused me of being an Israeli spy. It was only the intercession of my minders that saved me from being lynched.
What is the most inspirational place you have discovered on your travels?
I love Damascus. It is how you imagine the Orient to be but rarely is. It’s terrible to think of what is going on in Syria now.
Do you prefer to type or hand-write most of your work, and why?
I write everything out in longhand, with a quill pen, on vellum (though it is quite hard to come by these days.) No, just tap-tap-tap on a laptop.
What’s in your fridge at the moment?
Anchovies, gnocchi and smoked elk sausage (my wife’s away).
What’s your most memorable moment?
The birth of my daughter, Honor. Seeing this little pink and purple creature entering the world was indescribably powerful and moving.
Where were the last three places you visited on holiday?
Normandy, where we have a house; South Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, where we go every year; and the Sabine hills outside Rome where we used to live.
Have you ever stolen anything?
Yes, but it wasn’t really stealing…
What could you not live without?
My wife and daughter.
What are your plans for the rest of the year?
Catch a lot of fish.
