Indeed, why on earth (in devil’s name, which is closer to the Hungarian above) am I – and have been for so long – learning Hungarian? Sitting in Budapest half way through a three-week (almost) sojourn in Hungary in the early summer of 2025 with the specific intention of getting to grips with this intense, … Read more …
Listen carefully, and (my previous post refers) God is laughing his (their?) head off now as we prepare to drive home after a fascinating fortnight in Transylvania (writing this in Alba Iulia as the Romanian presidential election results come in – at the moment, looking good for Europe.) Instead of tandeming from Hungary to Bucharest … Read more …
For those seriously interested in what a BBC News correspondent based in Beijing recorded and reported during Deng Xiaoping’s pre-Tiananmen years of Jingji Gaige and Dui Wai Kaifang (Economic Reform and Opening Up), here’s a full list of raw cassettes collected during my time in China. The cassettes have all been digitised, and listed in … Read more …
As this website has been updated, in April 2025, I’m now making accessible literally ALL the raw cassettes I recorded first as BBC World Service Central Europe Correspondent based in Vienna (1981-84), then as BBC Radio China Correspondent (1984-1987), and on to BBC World Service Diplomatic Correspondent (1988-1992) as I covered the end of the … Read more …
Click the button below to be taken to 600 hours of raw cassette recordings from Mark’s work as BBC China and then WS Diplomatic Correspondent, 1984-1992. I’ve renamed them with year and country, and given the substantial size of the archive, they’re hosted online on OneDrive rather than here on the WordPress blog. If you … Read more …
It was tremendous fun discussing with Ian Sanders of Cold War Conversations my years first as student in East Germany and the Soviet Union in 1971/72, and then covering the communist world for the next 20 years for Reuters and the BBC. Click the screenshots below for the recordings – first covering my student days … Read more …
I’m not quite sure how this post will unfold, other than to know that a) like my despatches from Beijing or the Cold War’s diplomatic frontline it will probably be too long, and that b) some old BBC friends and colleagues may already be sighing, “Oh dear, there he goes again.” Prompted by Fergal Keane … Read more …
To say that Russia and the ex-Soviet space is complicated (think war journalist Arkady Babchenko, whose back-from-the-dead story unfolded during our spring 2018 trip here) is something of an understatement. As we’ve travelled (not by bike this time), we’ve of course been aware and on occasion reminded of unpleasant undercurrents that remain, both Soviet and … Read more …
As we watch the South Island fade into the distance, swaying with the Bluebridge ferry’s wave-riding, my thoughts float back over our rich, smooth and eventful 2900-kilometre tandem journey the length of New Zealand from the very North to the very South, with thanks to the Weather Gods and what must be a chorus of … Read more …
So this looks like being Mark’s last post (Jutta’s is still to come) from our Tandem Tour Aotearoa of New Zealand, with warm thanks to those who’ve followed our progress these past six and a bit weeks, a most rewarding 2900 kilometres from Cape Reinga in the far North to Bluff in the far South. … Read more …