It is 10pm on May Day, and just as the polling stations are closing, Paul Weller leans conspiratorially across the restaurant table. "I'm going to play 'Eton Rifles' tomorrow night," he whispers with a hint of pride. "The time is right again, don't you think?" As we talk at a quiet trattoria in a central London side street, a Boris Johnson victory is looking inevitable. "I thought I'd never play [...]

Snow caps the peaks of the mountains rising to the south. The sky above is clear blue and the temperature several degrees below freezing. I have climbed 75 metres to the summit of a man-made hill, a flat-topped pyramid on a fertile plain on the outskirts of Xi'an, in western China. I begin to dance a little jig, foot to foot, shaking out the cold from my bones, until it [...]