Billie Holiday’s last day
Billie Holiday died aged 44 in a New York hospital at 3:10am on Friday 17 July 1959. Some failed to notice. The New York Times published a short obit, but only on page 15. But for those who cared about her and her music, the news was a bitter shock. One of them was Frank […]
Closely observed hot chocolate
From my early childhood, an evening mug of hot chocolate has been a small but constant source of comfort. I suspect it’s a common addiction. Chocolate drinking is not a failing that many grown-up people own up to, and certainly not one that many would think of writing about. A notable exception is the poet […]
Prussian Blue
Like a teenager, C. has fallen hopelessly in love, with a visitor from the Continent. I didn’t see it coming. And the worst thing is that I’m not sure it’s a temporary infatuation that will soon pass. It’s taken a firm hold on her affections. Only time will tell whether everything will end in tears. […]
Sir Humphrey Mackworth, ‘a genius richer than thy mines below’
The earth, thy great exchequer, ready lies is the title of a superb new collection of stories by the Welsh writer Jo Lloyd, who won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2019. The nine pieces are very different one from another, in subject, setting and register. But they all share at least two things. […]
Murdering trees
A powerful symbol of the continuing human assault on the natural world is the wanton destruction of trees. The outstanding example must be the wholesale clearing of Amazonian rainforests by the Brazilian government (over 11,000 square kilometres were destroyed in the year to July 2020). Britain carries its own arboricidal guilt: the uprooting of whole […]
Y Cynllun Darllen, 1891-94
Heddiw mae clybiau darllen yn boblogaidd iawn fel ffordd i ddarganfod a rhannu llyfrau mewn cylch cymdeithasol, anffurfiol. Yn rhannol oherwydd esiampl ‘Oprah’ yn yr Unol Daleithiau a ‘Richard and Judy’ ym Mhrydain, sefydlwyd cannoedd o gylchoedd lleol (a rhithiol, yn yr oes Cofid). Erbyn hyn mae digon o enghreifftiau o glybiau sy’n trafod llyfrau […]
In praise of commons
Walk for ten minutes from where I write and you’ll arrive at the southern edge of Clyne Common. Houses alongside the track, most of them built within the last ten years, suddenly give way to an expanse of wild, unenclosed land. It stretches ahead of you to the west, and further to the north, gradually […]
Anna Maria van Schurman
One of the most useful things an historian can do is to restore to us people from the past who have unjustly slipped from our collective memory. Until recently an outstanding figure of early European science had vanished from sight almost completely, except in his home country. In his lifetime, the second half of the […]
Plague: a Martian sends a postcard home
My dearest brothers and sisters Five years have passed since I wrote to you about my last visit to Earth. You will remember that I ended my report by counselling you not to send me on a third mission to that hapless planet, or at least to that insignificant part of it known as the […]
Field
The simplest way to get there is from the top of the road that climbs up from the bay. Turning left at the signpost, you walk along a broad path. At one point it’s ankle-deep in mud, like most Gower footpaths in this damp and Covid-walker winter. Suddenly the path opens out into a field. […]
