New York

I just spent a cold, exhilarating few days in New York, seeing my great friend who edits a magazine there, walking around Greenwich Village and spending hours talking about the differences between life in the US and the UK.  When I first started visiting New York my holy grail was the Strand Bookstore where I would come away with stacks of second hand books. But things have moved on. The publishers I met talked incessantly about e books, and it was interesting to see a lot more of the same titles in the bookshops as you see in Britain. Given that I also spend a dinner obsessing about Murdoch and the Leveson inquiry with an American media journalist, the distance between America and England seemed to have shrunk even more. But I always come back from America excited and energised. No matter what British Airways does to prevent it.