Eulogy to Stephanie Wolfe Murray
This was the first address given at the funeral of Stephanie Wolfe Murray on the 5th of July 2017, at the Old Parish Kirk in Peebles. By Gavin Wolfe Murray. Stephanie, my mother, Mummy, the boss. She meant the world to me and I have been amazed to discover over the…
Remembering Stephanie Wolfe Murray
Since the loss of our darling Mother I have wanted to write about her, but the feelings are too raw and all I can say right now is that grief is a much more confusing process than I had imagined. I thought it was just sadness and gloom but it’s like being bounced…
A Day in the Life of Magnus Wolfe Murray
This portrayal of an extraordinary aid worker is included in the new travel book Himalayan Bus Plunge — & Other Stories from Nepal 05:30 – Alarm goes off and Magnus gets up. Quick wash but no time for breakfast. Onto his Giant mountain bike and off into the…
Tibet and Nepal
I want to describe my last visit to Nepal, a fascinating little Himalayan country. Thirty years have passed since I was last in Kathmandu. My presence there was both dramatic — I had been kicked out of Tibet — but also depressing: I was broke, my dream of…
Memory is an Unreliable Witness
I recently met up with Xander Berkeley, a Hollywood actor who played in one of the greatest thrillers of all time – Terminator 2 – which was made in 1991. He has featured in over 200 films and TV shows since then and is currently working on the Walking Dead, one of…
To My Kickstarter Supporters
I feel rather guilty that I’ve not updated my wonderful Kickstarter supporters, from whom I got £600 to do my bike tour of the Highlands, we well as the readers of my blog. My guilty conscience says “you took their money and ran…You didn’t deliver on…
What was the Soviet Bloc Really Like?
Soviet Russia was a very visual place, for all the wrong reasons. The colours were dark and gloomy, the people were listless and misshapen (air hostesses and officials tended to be huge while gymnasts and the poor were stick-thin). These were the images that we were…
5 Ways to Get Good Deals Abroad
Intro by Rupert Wolfe Murray. One of the purposes of this blog is to encourage people to travel and to write. I’d like to encourage people to write for this blog. I’m always looking for personal stories about travelling, or writing, and in this instance…
Diary of my Scottish Book Tour
Some rather ridiculous impressions from my recent bike/book tour in Scotland…in diary format. The photo above is of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, taken in 1987 by my friend Uli Zimmerman. 20 October, Edinburgh Today I will fly to Frankfurt, location of the…
How Aberdeen Helped me Live in Tibet
I have just cycled to the Scottish city of Aberdeen. It’s sunny and I didn’t know it was such an attractive city. Tomorrow at 2pm I will give a talk about my new memoir, 9 Months in Tibet, at a cool bookshop called Books and Beans. I will talk about how…
Writing about Tibet Helped me Find my Voice
It’s bizarre. I’ve written so much about my time in Tibet – I’ve got a book about Tibet coming out next month – and yet I haven’t written an article about it since 1987. If I was a proper writer, a pro, I’d have been churning out articles to a band playing; I’d have…
I Vote for Immigration
This started out as an email to my family, who are debating furiously on email about the EU referendum, immigration … and the Armageddon which will happen tomorrow if the wrong side wins. My big question to all you Brexiteers is this: imagine you are in court…
Will You Cast my Vote in the EU Referendum?
I’ve screwed up: I’m registered to vote in Liverpool but am going to London on the day of the EU referendum. I know I know, I should have organised a postal vote but I didn’t. The voting card has a provision for people like me. It says something like this: “if you get…
Liverpool’s Gobi Desert — Part 2
Imagine you’re a microscopic insect who has crawled through the hole in the middle of an old vinyl record. You look around, get your bearings but all you can see is a vast open space that stretches out to the horizon in all directions. There’s nothing in…
Liverpool’s Gobi Desert — Part 1
Camping is a paradox. On the one hand it’s really simple — you sleep outside — but on the other hand it’s really complicated: before you set off you must check you have a suitable tent (is it waterproof? do you have the poles and pegs?); do you…
In Defence of Foreign Aid
A newspaper is like a puzzle. Journalists write material that fits the exact requirement of particular pages – news, sports, health, arts, business. Like every puzzle, the structure of a newspaper is clear and logical when you understand it. Newspapers are…
Letter to Asylum Seekers
Dear Asylum seekers, First of all, welcome to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – the cumbersome name of my home country, a name that not many of my fellow Brits actually know. We tend to call ourselves English, Scots, Northern Irish or Welsh. I…
The Amazing Library of Liverpool
In my experience libraries are fusty places with fierce ladies telling you to be quiet, or big silent tombs where grim students bury their heads in books for hours on end. Many public libraries in Britain have been closed and others seem to be underfunded, under…
Can God Help Addicts?
I avoid conferences and seminars as they can be so boring but recently I spent two days of my life at the Recovery from Addiction Conference at Chester University and it was really interesting. And I’m not saying this because somebody paid me to be there or write this…
The Martian Helped Me Overcome Writers’ Block
I wanted to see a film last night and the only thing on at my local cinema was The Martian. All I knew about this film was that it starred Matt Damon. The film is great and it gripped me so tightly that I forgot about the real world outside. It also helped me…
What’s it Like to Live With a Neurotic?
I am constantly reminded of the Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams that I recently saw in Liverpool. The play is about a neurotic mother who lives in the past and makes her daughter’s life a misery. She reminds me of several people I have come across. The…
I Hate Starbucks but Still Use Them
I don’t think I’m alone in hating Starbucks, the American coffee shop that has spread its tentacles all over the world. They haven’t lied like Volkswagen did but they are hypocrites. The annoying thing is that I need Starbucks and if you get to the second half of this…
Hitching with a Migrant
I recently moved from Bucharest to Liverpool. During this transition I spent some time in London, where I got a phone call from a guy called Joel: “I work for BBC Radio 4,” he said, “and I’m making a show about hitching at night. I read your article about hitchhiking…
The Buzz of Getting Away
When I’m getting a train away from the city I often get a wonderful feeling of liberation. It’s as if I’m leaving all my worries behind and heading into a bright new future where things will be different. I think some people have a similar feeling when…
How Much Luggage Should I Take?
If you’re wondering how much luggage to take on your journey you’re asking the wrong question. The fact is you will fill up whatever bag you use for the journey, so the correct question is “What bag should I use?” If you’re thinking “I should make a list of all the…
Writing Articles is Easy – and Very Difficult
Writing articles is a useful skill and the ideal way for a traveller to provide updates from the road. It’s also the best way I know of organising my thoughts. Writing short articles teaches a valuable skill – how to select a universally valid point from an endless…
A British Newspaper Wants to Legalise Cannabis
British newspapers are overpriced and lacking in serious content. Why spend almost two pounds on the so-called “quality” press when you can buy a slimmed down version of the Independent – the “I” newspaper – for just 40p? Another problem with the British papers are…
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Romany Gypsies in Romania & Bulgaria
By Eion Gibbs Walking through Holland, Belgium, France, Italy and Slovenia the word gypsy didn’t enter my thoughts once. This doesn’t mean Traveller communities don’t exist there, it’s just that they’re so far removed from…
Irish Travellers and Romany Gypsies
This article was written by Eion Gibbs, whom I met in Bucharest in April 2015. He was at the tail-end of a great walk across Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, a ten-month epic in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor. After the furore I caused by…
