Simon Barnes Author and Journalist

It was our last night. At the end of a game of Russian billiards the balls are no longer returned and every successful shot counts double. That’s what it’s like that on your last night in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia: everything you see seems twice as meaningful as it was before. We stopped on… [Read More]

    There’s a certain shift in manner, not unlike a change of gear, that occurs with the move from pleasantries to business. You can see it in the walk of a tennis-player getting ready for the first serve of the match, or in the voice of a smart operator closing in on a deal…. [Read More]

               It was five in the morning. I could tell that from the light in the sky and the sound of feet outside my hut. Before their owner could wake me with a soft-voided “good morning” I got in first: “Morning! Thank you!” I was mildly surprised not hear the usual response: “You… [Read More]

    It’s not always like that, you know. Action and hunting and punch-ups and kills and copulations. I know that’s the sort of thing people like to tell you about when they are back from safari, and I know it’s what you see on wildlife documentaries: as if all nature was a conspiracy of… [Read More]

When we go walking in the bush the scout goes first, carrying his gun, because his job is to keep us all safe. Second is the guide, whose job is to show us the wonders of the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. After that, the guests. Then me. Which means that I’m usually the last to… [Read More]

               You can spend your holiday in Paris secure in the certainty that neither the Eifel Tower nor the Mona Lisa will trouble you at two in the morning. You can make a pilgrimage to Florence, Botticelli and Michelangelo and rest assured that none of them – not Venus and her seashell, not… [Read More]

          This time it was a young bull. And he didn’t like us at all. You have to know what you’re doing when you’re dealing with an elephant who doesn’t like you. We were driving out from Takwela Camp in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. It opened in 2019 and then came the pandemic. Now… [Read More]

               By all means go looking for something. Just don’t be surprised if you find something else. Sometimes instead of, sometimes as well as. It’s a truth that holds good for most of life, I suspect — and it’s unquestionably true of wildlife. So we went looking for the birds of the bog…. [Read More]

             I’m always the first up, drinking my rooibos tea by the river waiting for the carmines to rise. The sun, too, though that wouldn’t be quite as bright. I was at Takwela Camp, which stands on the banks of the Luangwa River in Zambia; just opposite was the confluence with the Mwaleshi and… [Read More]

               I once had a fancy for putting together an autobiography in the form of rivers. It would have the Thames, for my time as a Londoner. The Liffey, for my love of Ulysses. The Avon, for student years when I was seldom more than ten minutes’ walk from Clifton Suspension Bridge. The… [Read More]