I’m in between trips right now, having just returned from an exhausting but fun-packed holiday in Hungary and days away from a work trip to India.
As well as drinking too much wine and staying up far too late, I learned about life behind the Iron Curtain during the past week, when I met a number of people who were forced to flee Budapest as refugees following the doomed 1956 uprising against the communist regime.

Before I left, I contributed a feature to a terrorism special, out in this week’s Big Issue in the North. My job was to meet up with Tony Porter, detective chief superintendent with Greater Manchester’s counter-terrorism unit, to discuss the present situation and how policing has adapted to respond to modern methods used by extremists.