Of course, a list of interests says nothing of what I have actually written on those topics. In the case of every area mentioned above, it is quite a respectable corpus of work.

So in the field of religion, for example, I have over the last year or two had articles published on Orthodox Old Believers, the Moravian Brethren, Islamic villages in Bosnia, an annual pilgrimage of Hasidic Jews to Ukraine and Europe's silent synagogues.

The theme of travel history is vast, but the particular area that appeals to me is early documentary writing on journeys through Europe, the Near East and the Arctic regions. It is interesting to reflect on how attitudes to travel and exploration have changed. Just recently (in January 2009), I had an article published on the role of spiritualists and clairvoyants in the search for Franklin’s lost expedition in the Arctic.

It is all too common that tourist brochures proclaim a place to be offbeat. The places I visit and write about are often way off the conventional tourist trails. Think Belarus, Albania and beyond!

Yet we do not necessarily need to go to the very ends of the earth to find much which is novel. My writing also includes everyday life in Russia, the delights of beautiful town squares right across Europe and London's unsung suburbs. Add in a good number of articles on border communities across Europe, whimsical essays on the spirit of landscape, and a lot of stuff about rail and ferry travel and you begin to see what makes me tick.

Those interests amount to an agenda and a way of looking at the world. Slow travel nicely sums it up. It is a state of mind, an approach to people and places that means taking time to linger and get under the skin of communities.