Voices of Experience

The two-week Aegean voyage Starle arranged for our family was simply beyond anything we could have imagined. Our guide Nikos had private access to sites closed to the public — we visited a late-Minoan settlement on Milos that isn't even on the official maps yet. Our children, who I had expected to tolerate the history, became genuinely fascinated. They still talk about it two years later. The yacht itself was immaculate, the chef Costas was extraordinary, and every logistical detail was handled flawlessly. Starle will be planning our Aegean return next summer.

We've worked with many luxury travel companies over the years. None come close to Starle. The Tuscan villa they sourced had a resident chef — Luca — who cooked with ingredients he'd grown himself or sourced that morning from the local market. Pasta the shape of which I've never seen in a restaurant. Wine from a Brunello producer who sat with us for two hours telling us about his grandfather's vines. Pure magic. We've booked our fourth Starle journey already. This year: Rajasthan.

The Starle team handled our anniversary trip across five Thai islands on a stunning 48m catamaran. Every detail — from the champagne at sunrise in Phang Nga Bay to the private beach dinner on a completely deserted beach off Ko Lipe lit by a hundred paper lanterns — was flawlessly executed. But what set it apart was our Bangkok guide, Lek: she took us to places that simply weren't in any guidebook. An after-hours temple, a family who invited us to share their Songkran preparations. Utterly remarkable.

After decades of travelling in connection with diplomatic postings, we thought we had seen and done everything Japan had to offer. We were very wrong. Our guide — a former official of the Imperial Household Agency — arranged a private morning at Fushimi Inari before it opened, and a tea ceremony with Hideo Takahashi, a fifteenth-generation tea master, in a room that dated to the Edo period. My wife, who has been to Kyoto seven times, said it was the most profound two hours of any journey we have ever taken. Thank you, Miranda and the Starle Oxford team.

I came back from Patagonia a different person. That sounds dramatic, but it's true. Camping on the Grey Glacier with a fire and the clearest night sky I have ever seen — that does something to you. Carlos and his team were exceptional: professional, supremely competent in challenging conditions, and genuinely passionate about sharing the landscape they clearly love. The estancia in Argentine Patagonia was an extraordinary contrast — sophistication and wilderness in perfect balance. Already planning my return.

We were nervous about chartering a private yacht — it felt like an enormous step. Starle made the process completely painless and the experience transformative. Captain Tom was the perfect host: knowledgeable, funny, and unfailingly reassuring when the wind picked up off Anegada. The chef, Marcus, produced meals of a quality we'd expect at a London restaurant — but eaten on the deck watching the stars come up over the Atlantic. We'll be doing a 10-night Grenadines charter with Starle next winter. We're already counting down.

I asked Starle to design a journey that combined the finest contemporary art, classical archaeology, and exceptional food. They did not disappoint. A private evening with a living master ceramicist in Vallauris, a behind-the-scenes tour of the Biennale archives in Venice, dinner at a restaurant that opens for six tables a week by invitation only in Bologna — each day was a surprise. I travel constantly for my work, and this was among the best-organised and most stimulating weeks of my professional life.

I wanted a trip where my teenage sons would genuinely be engaged — not just tolerated by a luxury product designed for adults. Miranda and the Starle team delivered something beyond that: the boys' dive certifications completed at a private reef off Raja Ampat, a Komodo ranger who clearly knew every lizard by name, and a phinisi schooner that had a slide off the upper deck into the sea. The evening when we anchored in a bay and found ourselves the only humans within 50km — eating fresh tuna the chef had caught that morning — is something none of us will forget.

I wanted to understand Greece — not just see it. Starle found me an archaeologist, Theodoros, who had excavated at Knossos and who spoke about the Minoans as though they were his neighbours. On Crete, he arranged a private meeting with the chief excavator at Akrotiri. We walked ancient streets that had been buried since 1627 BCE. I've written about neurological wonder; I experienced it on that trip. The yacht, the crew, the food — all exceptional, as I'd been told they would be. But Theodoros made the journey.