Quite Alone – the book

Quite Alone – the book

COVID-19 has hit us all hard. I hope you, and those you know and love, are safe and well as you read this. I got home from my last trip to Jerusalem at the end of October 2019, and immediately self-isolated – this is long before the pandemic – to get the manuscript for my…

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In Kurdistan

In Kurdistan

In 2012 I read an article on an Iraqi news site about a small, historic town in Iraqi Kurdistan that was battling to save its architectural and cultural heritage from unregulated development amid economic hardship. The town was called al-Amadiya, or Amedi, and the accompanying picture of it was amazing, showing buildings crammed together on…

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David Dorr – art from travel

I’m more proud of this story than of most things I’ve done recently. I first came across David Dorr in Simon Sebag Montefiore’s book on Jerusalem. Montefiore mentions Dorr in passing: “One unique American visitor, David Dorr, a young black slave from Louisiana who called himself a ‘quadroon’, agreed with Flaubert: on tour with his…

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Qatar’s Digital Library

Sometimes, things just don’t work out. This is a story on the then-new Qatar Digital Library that I researched in 2014 and 2015, and wrote in 2016. Shortly after I’d filed, the editor who commissioned it apologised and said things had changed: he could no longer publish it. That happens. What hardly ever happens, though, is…

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The loneliest island

I’m lucky to have visited one of the world’s most remote inhabited islands twice. Ascension lies in the middle of the Atlantic, roughly halfway between Africa and South America – and the only reason I’ve been there is because of its runway: if you’re flying from one side of the planet to another, Ascension is…

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On the radio

I’m very excited – and incredibly lucky – to be doing more radio at the moment. As well as my penguin programmes for BBC Radio 4 recently, I’ve just finished making South America in the South Atlantic with Sparklab Productions, which is going out BBC World Service in August, Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent…

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The penguins that wouldn’t explode

The penguins that wouldn’t explode

It all started with a random line spotted during a search for something else. “Penguins aren’t heavy enough to set off landmines,” it said, or thereabouts. Was that true? Yes, it was – or, at least, mostly true: anti-personnel mines need about 8kg of weight to set them off, and most penguin species don’t get…

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Cracks in the ice

Cracks in the ice

So the big Antarctic news today (7 Dec 16) is all based on this press release put out yesterday by British Antarctic Survey, the government body coordinating the UK’s polar research, about their intention to move the Halley Research Station away from an expanding chasm in the ice shelf on which Halley sits. First, hats off to…

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Talking to people

I’m very happy to have given two talks in the last few days, both in my home town, Banbury. The first was an “Antarctic Evening”. Soon after I got home from my trip to Antarctica earlier this year with the BBC weather presenter Peter Gibbs, a local friend – community organiser Steve Gold – suggested…

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Relaunch day

Relaunch day

I’ve been waiting almost a year for this. Today’s the day I relaunch matthewteller.com, with a much-needed new design by the brilliant, patient and all-round excellent Tom Hole, who runs his own design studio named Stirtingale. The delays – and the lack of momentum on this blog over 2016 – are all down to me: first I…

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