The death of four US soldiers in Niger in 2017 put the spotlight on the west African country in a way that it has never experienced before. Already it seems like people's attention is beginning to fade as new catastrophes engulf the news cycle. That ...

Parmigiano Reggiano is one of Italy's premier export products and a pillar of Italian cuisine that has become a staple of middle class kitchens the world over. Its rustic image - the dense, uneven chunks of cheese made of unpasteurised milk that can ...

Today's cruise ships resemble small towns, complete with shops, restaurants, cafes, discotheques, fitness rooms, casinos, swimming pools and even mini golf courses. In the fight against boredom, a team of animators organises round the clock activities ...

On 7th January 1979, the Vietnamese Army entered Phnom Penh and established a pro-Vietnamese Kampuchean state, known as the People's Republic of Kampuchea, liberating Cambodia of the scourge of the Khmer Rouge killing machine. The Khmer Rouge leadership,...

Less than four weeks before the United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union, failing a last minute compromise or extension of the negotiating period, Piotr Malecki walked around London and asked a random mix of people how they thought Brexit would ...

Lagos is a place of superlatives. The most populous city in Africa, home to one of the busiest seaports on the continent, the commercial capital of a country that now boasts Africa's biggest economy and one of the fastest growing urban centres in the ...

It's common for western charities to collect used clothes and ship them, by the bale, to Africa as a form of aid. These donations, discarded by well-meaning Americans and Europeans, rarely make it to the end-user as charity though. Instead, donations are...

"I pointed out to the little prince that baobabs were not little bushes but, on the contrary, trees as big as castles; and that even if he took a whole herd of elephants away with him, the herd would not eat up one single baobab." Antoine de...

The shores of Lake Naivasha northeast of Kenya's capital Nairobi, made famous by the film 'Out of Africa', are covered in swathes of greenhouses producing one of the country's most valuable agricultural exports. Two fifths of all roses sold in Europe are...

Mennonites are Christians Anabaptists who arrived in Bolivia during the 1950s from Canada, Mexico and Belize. The government in Bolivia promised them land and religious freedom, and they came with the hope of preserving their traditional, simple way of ...

Over the past 15 years, Paraguay's landscape and economy have undergone drastic changes. Production of genetically modified soybean has bolstered the landlocked country's coffers to make it one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America. As of ...

Argentina's focus has long been on agricultural production and trade, which can be traced back to the sixteenth century when Europeans first settled there. In recent years, Argentina's agribusiness has exploded due to the huge global demand for ...

Kinshasa, a city of 10 million people known as Leopoldville during the colonial era after King Leopold II of the Belgians, stretches along the eastern banks of the Congo river for miles. The seemingly endless sprawl of the low rise city where most ...

Around 5.30 in the evening, the K27 train slowly trundled out of Beijing railway station In the summer of 2017. It was the first time I took the sleeper train between Beijing and Pyongyang which covers a distance of 1,360 km in around 23 hours. The train...

For a number of years, Kacper Kowalski has been wrapping up warm and braving the freezing temperatures aboard his gyroplane or on his paraglider high above northern Poland to capture the magical beauty of forests, fields and farmland covered in pure, ...

Georg Gerster died on Friday, 8 February 2019 at his home in Switzerland. In 2006, the British Museum held a major photographic exhibition for the very first time, presenting Georg Gerster's unique collection of aerial photographs of archaeological ...

2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution when, on 11 February 1979, the Iranian Army declared its neutrality, yielding power to revolutionaries loyal to Ayatollah Ruholah Khomeini and ending the Pahlavi dynasty that had ruled the country...

On the outskirts of Kharkiv, a drab industrial city in eastern Ukraine, a vast wooden box spilling out of a three-storey brick building houses The Institute, a life-size film set that is a perfect replica of an imaginary 1950s Soviet community. The ...

"Education will ruin our culture" laments Dorje, a local Tibetan teacher describing how compulsory education is driving the resettlement of nomads. "These lifestyles are endangered. You rarely see people on horseback nowadays. To improve ...

High up in the Peruvian Andes, way above the tree line, lies the city of La Rinconada, some 5,100 metres above sea level and thus the highest permanent human settlement in the world. With temperatures over the year averaging 1.2C and frequent rain and ...

One hundred years after the foundation of the hugely influential Bauhaus school in Weimar by Walter Gropius, Stefan Boness documents the eclectic architectural intricacies of Tel Aviv, one of the greatest concentrations of Bauhaus architecture in the ...

In war and conflict, women are often sidelined or forgotten and all too often become the victims of violence. History relegates their actions to the back pages. But they have much to tell about life under fire. They are fighters, victims and ...

The leaves of the khat plant, native to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, are a popular stimulant in countries like Yemen, Somalia and Ethiopia and have been consumed for thousands of years, much like the coca leaf in South America. When ...

In the depths of winter I set out on a long and difficult journey to the coldest populated place in the northern hemisphere. The Pole of Cold is in the Republic of Sakha, also known as Yakutia, in the remote north east of Russia. Two villages, ...

In rural regions of Georgia, a lack of social and economic integration has hindered immigrant communities since the end of the Soviet Union. Those particularly affected are groups of people who were forcibly relocated within the Union and have maintained...

More than 620 million Africans, or 2/3 of the population of the continent, have no access to electricity. Whilst 99 % of North Africa are electrified, only 32 % of the sub-Saharan countries are. In the 48 sub-Saharan countries the total power capacity is...

The Tibetan Plateau spans an area five times the size of Spain and has an average elevation of 4500 metres. After the Antarctic and Arctic, the plateau has the third highest reserve of ice which has led scientists to call it the 'Third Pole', thus ...

On a small patch of grass across the road from London's Houses of Parliament, a bizarre piece of political theatre is played out which encapsulates the complex relationship between politics and journalism. Sound bites are aired, loyalties reaffirmed, ...

No roads, over 200,000 square kilometres of taiga, swamps and permafrost and a mere 16,000 inhabitants living in around 28 villages (or 0.08 per square kilometre). Turukhansk District in the heart of Russia, close to the country's geographic centre and ...

"The Pacific may have the most changeless, ageless aspect of any ocean but the Mediterranean Sea celebrates the continuity of man." (Ernle Bradford, author of 'Mediterranean: Portrait of a Sea') The Mediterranean region has many faces. Rich...

The river Congo is navigable for 1,700 kms from Kinshasa to Kisangani. It is the lifeline of a region with few roads or railways and provides a vital source of livelihood for many of the 29 million people living on the banks of the river and its ...

Nick Hannes travelled the length and breadth of the former Soviet Union - all fifteen former republics - to document the reality of post-communist societies in the fragments of the once all-powerful empire. Along the way he uncovered the different ...

Global warming poses a direct threat to the island nation of Tuvalu. If the most pessimistic scientific predictions turn out to be correct, this pocket-sized Polynesian country, its people and its unique culture will be gone in less than a century, made ...

Less than a century ago, Iran had 10 million inhabitants, 5 million of whom were nomadic. Today, the population has risen to over 81 million but only a much smaller number - 1.5 million - still live a nomadic life. The two main tribes are the Bakhtiaris ...

In ancient times the southern part of the Arabian peninsula, modern day Yemen, was known as Arabia Felix, or fortunate, fertile Arabia. The difference to the current situation could not be more stark as starvation stalks the shattered country and a four...

"Dubai has developed into a vast theme park, where you can ski in the desert and swim with dolphins. Forever in search of illusions, we lose sight of reality. What does that do to your imagination? How many more malls, theme parks and hotels does a ...