This blog began, as these things sometimes do, in that curious borderland between sleep and wakefulness — the 5 a.m. liminal hour when my mind so many nights decides to stage its own theatre. In this particular dream, I found myself back in either Moscow or Beijing — I couldn’t quite tell which, perhaps both … Read more …
Prologue – Circling Russia and the Nature of Evil Artificial Intelligence, appearing this year in what the Germans would call my Umfeld — my environment — in a multitude of ways is giving me the writing and thinking assistance for which I’ve always craved. This therefore is perhaps the address I wish I could have given to … Read more …
Rather good to be back in rainy November Berlin, visiting friends now old, like us, in every sense of the word (50 years history and more), standing once again at the literal line that divided Europe and massively shaped both our lives. This place connects directly to old friends. The pastor of the original Versöhnungskirche, … Read more …
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 …