Beguiled

I discovered the poet Stevie Smith, as I suspect many others did, on 19 February 1980, when the film Stevie was first shown on British television – on BBC Two, at 21:00 to be precise. In my memory I hurried out to Whitstable’s Pirie & Cavender bookshop the following day and acquired a copy ofRead More

Visiting Van Gogh

For the last few months of his life, the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh lived in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise. He had been discharged from the clinic at Saint-Rémy where he had been treated for mental disorder, moving to Auvers to be near to local doctor Paul Gachet and his brother Theo, resident inRead More

Rearranging my books

It is time, once more, for me to rearrange my books. A visit to a couple of second-hand bookshops resulted in a bagful of titles to add to the collection, and such is the tight squeeze on some of the shelves that I need a rethink. Space must be created at more than one pointRead More

A brighter world

To Margate on a grey summer’s day, to the Turner Contemporary, which always has something interesting to show, occasionally exhilaratingly so. And so it was this time. The exhibition was of works by American Abstract Expressionist Ed Clark (1926-2019), of whom I knew nothing until now. Over four rooms, with a fifth devoted to aRead More

Ho for Hay

Let’s go to the Hay Festival. Three days of books and people, just over the border into Wales. Well, I’d not been to the Festival before now, for all its fame, and it’s been too long since I visited the book town that gave the world book towns. Staying just outside Hereford. A so-so townRead More