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
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
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
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
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
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