“I can still remember my mum (a voracious, if not discriminating, reader - I have…” — John Niven

There is a psychic cost children bear when they grow up in fear.

I remembered being young in the late '70s and early '80s and growing up at the height of the Cold War. I remembered how scared I was of nuclear weapons, how often I though about them and about the possibility of everything and everyone I knew vanishing in a second in temperatures hotter than the centre of the sun.

I go to the Caribbean for a month every January with hand baggage only. All you need is a passport and a credit card.

I don't do sports, and my idea of hell is being dragged around ruins/museums/famous buildings, so I guess I'm a beach bum.