British Guild of Travel Writers

Went to the British Guild of Travel Writers' Yearbook launch on Monday at the Intercontinental, Hyde Park.

This year, the cover art theme of the Guild handbook was "windows." I sent off some of my best photos of worldwide windows, and was thrilled to be told that one of them - of a small-paned Austrian Christmas window - was to be used.

And so it was. Unfortunately, all the Christmassy stuff was Photoshopped away, and my window frame was used as the frame for everyone else's pictures.

Never mind - glad to be of assistance, as they say. Above is another Viennese window. Not publishable because the perspective isn't right, but attractive, all the same.

Below is a window picture which disturbed me. It shows workmen in the museum in Aleppo, Syria. I've never seen such lack of care for the artefacts. You can just see a few valuable old jars to the left, simply waiting for a direct hit from some of the building materials being manhandled by men balanced on ladders. Elsewhere in the museum it would have been perfectly possible to walk in to the galleries - which were a shambles - and help yourself.

That photo was taken two years ago and I imagine that the museum is now renovated.