Joanna Lumley

摘要

This well-loved actress - first Purdey, then Patsy - is now a campaigner too, for the Gurkhas and a garden bridge over the Thames. Born in Kashmir in 1946 and bred in Malaya, she has mountains in her blood. This was the home of the Dalai Lama until the current one was exiled in the 1950s. I've never been there, but my grandfather was a diplomat in the region and my grandmother was the first European woman to visit the palace. She made wonderful pastels and paintings of it, which she gave to her granddaughters, and which I look at every day. It's owned by the Chinese: the Tibetans are having their culture stolen. I'm determined only to go when it's an autonomous region. It's on the hill in the middle of Lhasa on a vast plain. The palace rises out of the rock, terracotta, gold-topped: it's staggeringly beautiful and austere. The Dalai Lama has written about the sense of mystery, tragedy and hope that pervades it.