When England beat Germany in Berlin on 19 November, I must have been the only English football fan who wasn't celebrating, because ever since I was a kid I've (secretly) cheered on the German national team. I was born and raised in England but my father was German, born in Dresden, and the more my English friends ridiculed and abused "the Krauts", the more I grew to like them.

There [...]

Often, when I return to Hamburg, I see the ghost of my German grandmother, walking the streets where she spent her youth during the heyday of the Third Reich. I sometimes see her promenading along the path that runs along the River Alster, or window-shopping on Jungfernsteig in a fur coat that's seen better days. She still looks the same after all these years - tall, robust and indestructible, more [...]

I never liked Rubens until I went to Antwerp, and even then I didn't warm to him straight away. His paintings always seemed too slick, too showy and accomplished. But then, in a quiet church on the edge of the old red-light district, I came across a picture that made me change my mind.

Most of the Rubenses I had seen before were ingratiating tributes to rich despots. Even his [...]

In a little alley called the Brodgasse, a short walk from Mozart's birthplace, you can buy a souvenir that encapsulates Salzburg's strange relationship with its most famous son. A Mozartkugel looks a bit like a Ferrero Rocher. Each one is made of pistachio and marzipan, wrapped in nougat and dipped in chocolate. They cost about 65p each. Naturally, they work out a bit cheaper if you buy in bulk, and [...]

Beneath the Brandenburg Gate, just around the corner from Dunkin' Donuts, is a new museum, devoted to John F Kennedy, that sums up Germany's waning love affair with the United States. JFK spent less than eight hours in Berlin during his tour of Germany in June 1963, but the speech he made here was the defining moment of his presidency, and he knew it. "We'll never have another day like [...]

On the stage of Brighton's Theatre Royal, Nicholas Parsons, Su Pollard and a vast throng of luvvies are gathered around a gigantic birthday cake. But this isn't Pollard's birthday party, or Parsons's for that matter. It's the 200th birthday of one of Britain's oldest theatres, a theatre that has played a leading role in the story of Britain's greatest seaside resort.

The Theatre Royal Brighton opened in 1807 on the [...]

The man in the Dynamo Dresden shop was fed up. It was a busy weekday morning and the streets were full of shoppers, but I was his only customer. Yes, last summer's World Cup had been a big success, he said, but almost all the matches had been played in western Germany. A few foreign football fans had found their way here from Leipzig, the only World Cup stadium in [...]

"How do you spell his surname?" asked the woman at my local bookshop, when I asked if they had a biography of William Wilberforce. The bloke in Foyles had heard of him, but didn't have any books about him. Nor did Borders or Waterstone's. I was amazed. Wilberforce was once a familiar national figure, like Elizabeth Fry or Florence Nightingale. Now I couldn't buy a book about him. How had [...]

"Isn't that a gay resort?" people asked us in 1999, when we booked our first trip to Sitges. We didn't know and we didn't care. My wife was pregnant and I'd left a steady job at the BBC to write a book but it wasn't working out. Nightlife, gay or straight, was the last thing on our minds.

When we got there, we realised our friends were right. Gay men, [...]

This autumn more than three million people will travel to Blackpool to see a work of art that is hardly ever mentioned in the metropolitan press. The Blackpool Illuminations attract many more visitors than the Edinburgh Festival. They have been up and running for far longer, too. So why do the broadsheets ignore this trash- aesthetic extravaganza? They don't know what they're missing. The Illuminations aren't just an excuse for [...]