How on earth do you review a year like 2020? To do so would suggest normality, to act as though this not been a year when all regularity stopped. Everything became a parody of itself, an echo of something that we used to do when it seemed that we had a reason for doing so.Read More
Last in this series looking back on 2019 is the year in some favourite images (mostly mine). This was the year in which I visited Greece, the Lake District (twice), walked many miles through the Kent countryside, took part in the digitisation of many newspapers, visited art galleries and snapped the other visitors, and continuedRead More
I read a lot of books in 2019. I bought more than I read, but those are almost separate pleasures, two different kinds of discovery. One is a quest, the other an exploration. I guess that the linked goal is a search for an ideal: the pristine copy, or one that has aged gently, tastefullyRead More
Third in this short series of posts on my cultural highlights for 2019 is works of art. Here are a few favourite artworks from a year’s gallery-going, letting the images speak for themselves. For each I’ve given the artwork, artist and date, the name of the gallery where I saw it, and the name ofRead More
Next up in my reviews of the year is the year in music. Spotify, which clearly is keeping a watchful eye on me, has passed on the information that I listened to 4,535 different songs over 2019. I’m not quite sure whether this is too many, average, or less than I would listen to whenRead More
So here we are at the end of another year. Who knows where the time goes? Only the archivists. Anyway, as is now traditional, it is time for some reviews of the year, noting the things cultural that attracted me over the year. As is also traditional, we start with a review of the yearRead More
Last in this series looking back on 2018 is the year in images. St Helena, Ireland, the Lake District, around Kent, working in London, and much reading. My pictures (bar one), my memories. Most of the photographs I take end up on my Flickr site, for anyone who might be interested (all under a CreativeRead More
Next in these reviews of the year is things seen on screen. Now that the boundaries between film, television and Netflix have blurred so utterly, it seems foolish to think of the various forms of screen entertainment or instruction as being separate from one another. We separate them only out of habit. Anyway, here areRead More
Third in this series of reviews of the year, from my humble perspective, is music. While live music was only occasional, and then too often disappointing (I shall mention no names), recorded music was quite splendid. Spotify is one of the great cultural enablers of the age. Yes, the audio quality is sub-standard, and theRead More
Next in these reviews of the year is the year in books. I read a lot in 2018, and it was a vintage year: for books published in 2018, for those I finally caught up on, and (best of all) all those unexpected surprises from times past. I’ve put the highlights into nine categories, withRead More