Ten years ago, London 2012 began. It was the culmination of a dream, and now a dream is all that it has become. Enraptured from an early age by the idea of the Olympic Games, of its people, its contests and its principles, I had so wanted to see one of the Games. Then, whenRead More
Author: Luke McKernan
The book of news
Such has been the flurry of business surrounding the British Library’s exhibition on the history of British news, Breaking the News, that I have neglected to mention here what should be its most lasting legacy: the book. So, at the end of April 2022, the British Library published Breaking the News: 500 Years of NewsRead More
Encountering the news
One of the special features of the British Library’s Breaking the News exhibition is a large-scale panorama, created by designers Northover&Brown. Objects and graphics have been placed into flowing pictures of networks, places and people, tracing the changing ways in which we have discovered the news over five centuries, from town squares to what ElonRead More
Beautiful news
Two years I wrote about an exhibition of the remarkable infographics of W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and said that I was working on an exhibition of infographics myself, due to be shown at the British Library in August 2020. Then fate intervened.Read More
Worlds and mirrors
In a time of conflict, sing the songs of the other side. I watched Solaris again the other night – the 1972 Soviet film, not its pale American remake. At the time of the crass, blind adventurism of the invasion of Ukraine, I felt the need to experience the finest of Russian culture. The filmRead More
Lakeland roads
Walking along some fellside path in the Lake District, grey skies and a gentle drizzle, suddenly I am able to fly upwards. Hovering high above the hills, fields and waters, I can see the lattice-work of tracks, paths and roads that intersect across the land. With this map-like view of the terrain I view acrossRead More
Alternative Bob
It’s curious how we seem to value the recordings of songs over the songs themselves. That is, in times past it was the song itself that mattered and the song that has survived. There might be a known composer, there might be a singer’s name attached to it on sheet music (“as sung by”), orRead More
Pip, Lean and Cinderella
Plant a pip, and you hope that it will grow. It will, in time, establish roots and shoot upwards, growing in depth while it reaches up to the light. It is how all stories must work. We begin at a point that is presented to us as the beginning, but which we soon learn isRead More
2021 – the year in twelve (or so) books
Let’s move on to the books read in 2021. Of these there were plenty – too many to remember, let alone list. So, as in previous such lists, I am restricting myself to one book per month, even though some months were more full of riches than others, meaning some fine works had to beRead More
2021 – the year in images
Next in the reviews of 2021 comes images – personal images, that is. The usual mixture of nature composing itself to its best advantage, abstract art discovered in run-down places, and people arranging themselves as they will. For higher resolution versions click on the title links, which will take you to my Flickr pages. MyRead More