A sturdy walking distance from here is Higham, a village midway on the main road from Rochester to Gravesend, with commanding views over the Medway valley and Thames Estuary. Here it was that Charles Dickens in his prosperous later years purchased a house that he had dreamed of living in when a child. His fatherRead More
To the Royal Academy on a Friday evening, joining those neglectful souls rushing to see the Bill Viola / Michelangelo exhibition before it closes (on March 31st). It was very impressive – it could hardly have been otherwise. The exhibition bringings together the work of video artist (for want of a better term) Bill Viola,Read More
You led me into the trackless woods, My falling stars, my dark endeavour. Anna Akhmatova, from ‘To My Poems’ (translated by Lyn Coffin) What joy there is in coming across the great work of art that you had not been expecting. The writer new to you whose words say exactly what you had been, unknowingly,Read More
In my ignorance, I had thought that the tomb of Philip Larkin’s poem ‘An Arundel Tomb’ was in Arundel. One day I shall be in Arundel, I thought, then I shall pop into whatever church it is and see it. So it came as a bit of surprise to be wandering through Chichester cathedral, forRead More
In the heart of the City of London, at the corner of Poultry and Queen Victoria Street, stands a striking modernist pink stone building. No. 1 Poultry Street is the youngest listed building in the country (it was granted grade II* status in 2016), but the site it occupies has a long history. Tucked aroundRead More
Back in 1981 one of my favourite haunts was the Albion Bookshop in Mercery Lane, Canterbury. Squeezed into its medieval plot over two floors, tightly-packed books climbed up the shelves to ceiling height, while central islands created alleyways through which I could venture through all – so it seemed – that the world of lettersRead More
I was in the south-west of Ireland recently, on business matters but with a couple of days extra in which to explore. And so I went to Kinsale. It’s a small town, not far from Cork, located at a river mouth feeding out into the sea, its harbour facing a long cove, beyond which liesRead More
I read many books in 2017; I drank many cups of coffee. There’s an argument for my reviewing the various coffee drinks I’ve had over the year, intertwined with the locations in which I enjoyed them (ah, the latte I had at that ice cream parlour in Helsinki back in May…), but on balance IRead More
I read a good many books in 2016; I drank a good many cups of coffee while I was doing so. Sometimes other beverages, but mostly coffee. If you just want to see the books rather than read about them, you can go to my Flickr page, The book I’m reading the drink I’m drinking,Read More
The Times Literary Supplement used to have a weekly competition which invited its readers to identify three literary quotations on a connected theme. It was difficult, so it was a small triumph if I knew one of the quotations, an annual occurrence to spot two. One day, some years ago, I recognised one of theRead More