Contrary to conventional wisdom, I like to judge a book by its cover. If the cover looks good, then the results inside tend to be good also. The better the content, the more inspired the jacket designer must feel. Certainly this has been my rule when judging the use of paintings for book covers. IRead More
On going a journey
It is my habit, whenever journeying anywhere, to take a book with me. No matter what the journey, whether it be short or long, on foot or by transport, there must always be something to hand that I can read. At some point I will sit down, and though a certain amount of staring outRead More
Covering Bob
I’m on working on a new web project which is close to going live, but it’s meant that writing on the web, including this site, has been a bit on the quiet side. But while I’ve been working on said project I’ve been having fun listening to Bob Dylan cover versions. It started when IRead More
Such stuff as dreams are made on
To Stratford, courtesy of Gravesend last night, seeing a live broadcast of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Tempest close to home and in relative comfort (alas the theatre designed with sufficient consideration to fit my legs has yet to be built). The production has generated much interest because of the use of itsRead More
Analysing the past
There are exciting changes happening in how we use newspapers to study the past. After decades in which the use of newspapers in research meant leafing through volumes or scrolling through microfilms, digitisation made millions of newspapers more readily searchable and far more widely available. But now that digitisation that taken us to the nextRead More
A toss of the coin
To the Almeida Theatre in London to see Mary Stuart. I’d not seen or read anything by Frederich Schiller before now (beyond those words for Beethoven’s 9th, of course), but on the strength of this gripping piece of theatre I am going to have to find out more. Schiller’s 1800 play tells of the finalRead More
2016 – a year of Shakespeare
Fourth and final among these reviews of the year is Shakespeare. 2016 was Shakespeare’s quatercentenary, apart from anything else a great opportunity to use that splendid word – and an annoyance of course when others try to correct it (there is no ‘r’ in quater- – look it up). Specifically, it was four hundred yearsRead More
2016 – a year’s television
Next up in these reviews of 2016 is television. Television as receivable in the UK is going through a purple patch, thanks largely to the box set phenomenon. There is as much trite tosh on conventional TV as ever there was, and I despair of supposedly informative history programmes which are little more than aRead More
2016 – a year’s reading
I read a good many books in 2016; I drank a good many cups of coffee while I was doing so. Sometimes other beverages, but mostly coffee. If you just want to see the books rather than read about them, you can go to my Flickr page, The book I’m reading the drink I’m drinking,Read More
2016 – a year online
It’s the time of year for reviewing the year. As with last year, I’m going to put up a short series of posts on some of the cultural things that distracted my attention from the news, if only for a while (not that I’m actually complaining about the news – for a news archivist theseRead More