William Cook

‘A love of boats and sailing is the surest of all passports to a happy life,’ wrote Arthur Ransome. Standing on Windermere Jetty on a crisp clear morning, gazing out across the cool grey water, you can see what he meant. Sailing around England’s largest lake is a great way to spend a lazy day, and the new Windermere Jetty Museum is the best place to embark. There’s been a boating museum in Bowness since the 1970s, but it used to be more modest — a collection of old steamboats saved from the scrapyard by a local builder called George Pattinson. Now his old fleet has a much smarter home: a wooden building with stunning views of the lake.

Standing on Warren Hill in the morning mist, watching Britain’s finest thoroughbreds thunder past, you realise what makes Newmarket so special. Racehorses are all around you — there are yards all over town. Every morning, there are hundreds of horses out training. And these aren’t any old horses. They’re some of the fastest racehorses in the world. Horses have cantered across this windswept heath ever since James I came here to hunt, and 400 years later racing remains Newmarket’s lifeblood. The town grew up around racing and its layout reflects its sporting origins — Tattersalls, the world’s oldest bloodstock auctioneers, is just behind the high street. The surrounding fields are crisscrossed by 50 miles of gallops.

‘It’s the same old story — pay or pray,’ said my oldest friend, sardonically, when I told him I was sending my children to a Church of England school. I could hardly blame him for being cynical. He’d known me since we were teenagers, when we were both devout and pious atheists. Yet now I was educating my kids for free, while he was forking out a small fortune to go private. No wonder he felt a bit put out. Since I started going to church again, our friendship has not been quite the same. For cash-strapped parents, the C of E system is a have-your-cake-and-eat-it solution to an age-old dilemma. Can’t afford school fees? Don’t fancy the look of your local state school?

‘Welcome to the free territory of Trieste,’ reads the sign in the shop window. ‘US and UK come back!’ For me, this is the sort of thing that makes Trieste such a beguiling place. Sixty-four years since those British and American troops departed and handed this disputed seaport back to Italy, it still feels like a no-man’s-land, stranded between the Slav and Latin worlds. Jan Morris, the queen of travel writers, called Trieste the capital of nowhere, and I needed to read only the first few pages of her bewitching book Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere to know I’d love it here. ‘The last breath of civilisation expires on this coast where barbarism starts,’ wrote Chateaubriand, in 1806.

In the historic heart of Riga, Latvia’s lively capital, stands a monument which sums up this country’s stormy past. The Freedom Monument was built in 1935 to commemorate the war of independence in which patriotic Latvians fought off the Germans and the Russians to finally establish Latvia as a sovereign state. That first bout of independence lasted barely 20 years. In 1940 the Soviets marched in, then in 1941 the Nazis marched in and kicked them out, and in 1944 the Soviets marched back in again and stayed until 1991. Yet despite being earmarked for demolition, the Freedom Monument survived. In the 1980s it became the focus for protests against Soviet persecution of Latvian dissidents.

Football is a game for gentlemen played by ruffians, and rugby is just the opposite. That’s what I was taught at grammar school, and for 40 years I believed it. Soccer is for oiks, our teachers told us. Posh boys are no good at football. And so football-playing oiks like me were forced to play rugby, in an attempt to turn us into proper gentlemen. Of course this was utter nonsense — a lot of Britain’s top public schools play football, and always have done. Yet this inverted snobbery prevails, which is ironic, because football in independent schools has never been in better shape. Having long been seen as the poor relations, many independent schools are now a match for the best football schools in the state sector. What has happened?

Austria assumes the Presidency of the Council of the European Union this Sunday, and normally the response among rightminded Britons would be a resounding ‘Who Cares?’ Even before we voted Leave, this rotating six month stint was generally regarded with indifference. Now we’re on our way out, why should we be bothered whose turn it is in the EU chair? Well, the big difference this time around is that Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is rapidly emerging as Europe’s most influential politician. And for the EU, his spell in the hot seat could hardly have come at a more crucial time. Like Trump’s America and Brexit Britain, Europe is divided.

When my American friends invited us to stay with them in New Jersey, my 13-year-old daughter was thrilled. She’d never been to the States before, and she couldn’t wait to see Manhattan. I had to break the news to her that there were no skyscrapers where we’d be staying. Plainfield, New Jersey, is an easy commute from New York City, but it feels like a world away. Clapboard houses with star spangled banners: this is the real America. You’d never know Penn Station was just an hour away by train. I took my daughter into NYC, and we did all the touristy things proper travel writers look down on: we went up the Empire State Building; we went for a walk in Central Park. My daughter had a great time and so did I, but our best memories were back in New Jersey.