I am on a train speeding through the Swedish countryside en route to yet another tough assignment. I am going to write an article about Scandinavia’s first nudist B&B for The Times (www.hyltebergagard.se). I have covered (being the operative word) some …

Although I lived here as a child and teenager, there is much I had forgotten. Here are some of the more remarkable things about this country. In the summer it gets light at 2 in the morning In the winter it gets dark at 2 in the afternoon Most people i …

We have embarked on the next leg of our European tour. As I write I am looking out over silver birches, pretty red wooden houses and the sea in the distance. We are in Sweden in our rented house in the Stockholm archipelago. As we were settling in here …

When I was a teenager living in Sweden my Italian aunt once asked me why I chose to live “in that periphery of the world”. She had a point. I could have lived in London or Rome and compared with either of those places, the Swedish countryside probably …

So my Swedish fantasy has been fulfilled. This does not involve blond hunks or even meatballs; but my children playing in the Swedish woods and more importantly leaving the woods with dark blue mouths on account of eating too many blueberries. The weat …

After three days of trawling around various sights, museums and shops in Stockholm there is one clear winner. She has strange red hair, odd stockings and a monkey called Herr Nilsson. Yes, it’s Pippi Longstocking, who as far as I can see is the most en …

So, the journey started well. We had been driving for three minutes when Olivia announced she wanted to be sick. Once at Stockholm airport (which seemed like a lifetime later) we lost Leonardo. I had that awful pit-of-the-stomach fear that only losing …

Today is the last day of school. You would think the children would all be jolly happy and behave beautifully but no, this morning from the moment they woke up to the moment we left them in the care of their deliriously happy (I wonder why?) teachers, …

Never mind globalisation; there is an even greater threat lurking. Sweden is on course for world domination. It is achieving this through subtle cultural infiltration at thousands of IKEA stores all over the world. You read it here first: the Viking sp …

I am just finishing off my truffle omelette (like you do) when I get a call from a charming young journalism student. As part of her final year project she is publishing a Swedish newspaper. She has read my articles in the Mail, knows I am half-Swedish …