...for its intimacy, its immediacy and for its magical, ethereal nature, for ideas broadcast now that are gone forever. I love it too for that invisible space which can only be filled by the imagination of the listener.

Last year Radio 4 broadcast my new book Magic Bus as a Book of the Week. The wonderful Kerry Shale, with over 200 radio plays, three Sony awards plus all of Bill Bryson's books and Life of Pi to his credit, was the reader. His voices for the characters were extraordinary, according to producer Jane Marshall.

Two years ago Radio 4 broadcast, Building Icarus, my five-part audio diary of building by hand a light, white flying machine in a Cretan village. This series was - according to David Sexton in the Sunday Telegraph - 'an ingenious, engaging piece of travel-writing'. The research also provided the raw material for an earlier book, Falling for Icarus.

Even if you missed Book of the Week or the series you might like to take a moment to check out the story on this website. In these pages you'll find happy snaps of building the aeroplane as well as details of the book, plus excerpts from all my other travel books. Also - in knowing me - a biography, FAQs and travel-related hot links (all of which will be updated regularly).

I feel a great joy and privilege in making radio programmes for the BBC. For Radio 4 I wrote and presented eight series of Itchy Feet, my travel series (1993/2000). In the course of 43 programmes we flew around Saturn, indulged in dirty weekends, went walkabout with aboriginals, ate alligator in the Amazon and monkey stew in the Congo and followed the ten-year-journey of a child's voice. Next on Radio 4 came Out-takes: Tales from the Trim Bin (1999), a one-off series about my wasted decade in the film business - with David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich (click to photo gallery). Then, inspired by Lawrence Durrell's travel books, I swam, drunk and reflected on his Greek islands in the Radio 3 Sunday Feature, Following Durrell (2001).   In Baptising the Gods (2003) I went back to Greece to explore the struggle between Christianity and the Olympian gods, in an attempt to discover if, 2,000 years after the birth of Christ, the gods continue to hold sway over the Greek soul.

Some of the programmes have been picked up by the BBC World Service. And from a studio in Bush House my voice -- like hundreds of thousands of others -- has been carried around the globe. Which is the glorious point of radio - voices and ideas reaching across borders, celebrating that which we share and that which makes each of us unique. The story of my father giving my mother a steam locomotive has been broadcast from John O' Groats to Land's End.On CBC I tried to sell my old car (and received offers from Newfoundland and Inuvik). Through radio man's reach comes close to surpassing his grasp, assuming that anyone is listening in!