In the last entry of the last published volume of my diaries I was in my bed at home trying to salvage what sleep I could before leaving for nearly twelve weeks away on the most ambitious project I had ever got myself into. It might well have been a dream then, the semi-wakeful fantasy of a would-be traveller who had reached his mid-forties with no great adventures to show for it.

By the time this third volume of Diaries begins, it is no dream. In my first entry I’m just out of bed, washing my smalls, no longer in the comfort of my own home, but in a ship’s cabin halfway down the Adriatic Sea. I’m a full four days into a very big adventure which will shape my working life for the next twenty-five years.

Read extracts from the latest volume of Michael’s Diaries, 1988 to 1998 below. (New entries added regularly.)

Travelling to Work – available now in the Shop