Long, long ago, when at school, I was presented with a passage from a novel to assess. I was sixteen, maybe, in an English class. We must have been given many such passages from books and told to write a short essay on them. I can vaguely remember the text book, which had several suchRead More
I do not expect hotels to be exceptional. I want them simply to be functional, a comfortable base from which to explore. The luxury hotel, by that measure, is a nonsense, because it could be anywhere. You must want to get out of your hotel as much as you hope to like staying in it.Read More
There is no time for complacency, the next attack on knowledge is about to happen. Richard Ovenden, Burning the Books (2020) The British Library has been a news story of late, and not a happy one. On 28 October 2023 the Library fell victim to a cyber-attack. A criminal group named Rhysida infiltrated the Library’sRead More
The first X-rated film I saw was The Long Good Friday. It was 1981, I was nineteen, and a little apprehensive about the promised violence that only someone of the age I had now attained was permitted to see. The opening scenes of the film were confusing. Money was being changed hands, clearly illicitly. TheRead More
It begins with a book, a map, then a man swimming to the shore of island. It is the most economical of openings to a film. The book tells us that this is a story of note, one that should automatically command our respect. The map tells us that what we are to witness isRead More
The poet was a scientist The scientist was a poet The one always saw the world with the eyes of the other ‘In the microscope’, for instance Here too are cemeteries, fame and snow. And I hear murmuring, the revolt of immense estates. It is the view of one who understood the puzzle and theRead More
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
So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum in painted quiet and concentration keeps pouring milk day after day from the pitcher to the bowl the World hasn’t earned the world’s end. ‘Vermeer’ Poetry is everywhere. It is in the view framed by my window. It is in the cup from which I have justRead More
There are some small out-of-the-way landing-places on the Thames and the Medway, where I do much of my summer idling. Running water is favourable to day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best of running water for mine. I wish those words were mine. They fit so precisely with my thoughts and my locationRead More
So much of the past is now unreadable. Not just in a metaphysical sense, but quite literally so. Volume upon volume of the stuff that you cannot imagine anyone having had the stamina or the interest to attempt at the time. I pick up some works of the Victorian era and pity the typesetters. TimeRead More