Hundreds of people, mostly men, squeeze their way past each other and the two rows of stalls flanking the room. They stop every shuffled yard to peer closely at labels on bottles and jars, and the samples of their contents in corresponding ramekins. They take little pieces of soft tortilla…

Leaning over me, in a small south London bar, a 6ft 8in man spits abuse in my face. Targeted, personal barbs, shredding my character and career. A group of onlookers are laughing and cheering him on. Before you mutter “Broken Britain”, this isn’t a symptom of Brexit or austerity. This…

As I lie on my back in a small Tokyo apartment, a 70-something Japanese man, half his right thumb missing, is rhythmically piercing my skin with minute ink-tipped needles on the end of an aluminium stick. This is tebori, the traditional Japanese method of tattooing. …

Some of the names in this article have been changed to protect the innocent, and the not so innocent. And me, should I ever return to the village of Great Barrington, Gloucestershire. It’s a Sunday morning in December and I’m showering in my bathroom above the Fox Inn, Great Barrington…