As you can gather (see below) I’ve been away. First Chile, then Peru. The idea was to make a fast-turnaround documentary about the rescue of the 33 miners in San Jose copper mine. Which, after 5 weeks of 18-hour days, we did. I believe the film is going out in the US later this week. It will be on the Discovery Channel around the world sometime shortly after that. Someone told me around 150 million people are likely to tune in, which is pretty impressive: almost exactly 150 million more people than read my last book, in fact (my parents don’t get Discovery).

Courtesy of an old friend – the indefatiguable Guillermo Galdos - we managed to get almost complete access to the rescuers, the drillers and the staff, while the rest of the world’s press had to wait outside the mine gates. So, lots of rather exclusive stuff. I’ll be posting photographs of the drills, the equipment and the people that took part in the very near future.

In the meantime, A History of the World since 9/11 has been proof-read, typeset and checked by a team of lawyers. First copies should be arriving soon.