A Question of Identity

A Brno numbskull who doesn’t need a passport © Ricky Yates

In early December this year, my current British passport will expire. As the United Kingdom does not issue identity cards to its citizens, my passport is the only accepted form of ID that I have whilst living in continental Europe. In 2016, I will be travelling to the UK twice, as well as to Poland for the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod, not forgetting my now monthly trips to Dresden. All of this is before thinking about where Sybille and I might want to go on holiday together!

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office website states that I must allow four weeks from my application and supporting documentation, including my current passport, arriving at the Passport Office in the UK, before I can expect to receive my new passport. During that time, I will be . . . → Read More: A Question of Identity

Forty years on – how the world has changed

My passport photograph from 1974

Do you recognise this man? Yes, believe it or not, it is Yours Truly – the photograph being the one that appears in my first-ever British passport, issued to me forty years ago in 1974, by the British High Commission in Canberra, Australia. It dates from the days when you were actually encouraged to smile and show your teeth in a passport photograph, something that is now no longer acceptable or allowed 🙁

It was with this passport, that in 1975, I travelled from Australia, where I had lived for the previous four and a half years, back to my country of birth, the United Kingdom. After flying from Sydney, to Kathmandu in Nepal, the rest of that journey was overland, taking a period of two and a half months. . . . → Read More: Forty years on – how the world has changed