Keyword: adventure

Like most of my generation, I grew up with the Famous Five, my childhood enriched by farfetched notions of mystery and secret passages. Rereading those books of long ago, I can forgive the predictable plots and banal writing style and enter into the carefree world of children solving crimes and catching villains. I am happy to accept the implausibility of these children having such adventures everywhere they go and never seeming to grow old despite a succession of school holidays. I am ha…

Between 1965 and 1970, I studied at Highgate School (founded 1565). Its main Victorian gothic building perches on the summit of Highgate Hill. About two fifths of a mile south east of the school, an architecturally unexceptional late Victorian residential building stands on Cromwell Avenue (number 65). Although this brick edifice may not look special, it harbours the ghosts of a lesser-known episode in the history of India’s struggle for independence from the British Empire. The only thing that…