Archive for 2014
Unreal City
The City of London, the ‘square mile’, must count as one of the strangest places on earth. During the week thousands of workers stream into it every morning over London Bridge – ‘… so many, I had not thought death had undone so many’, says the Dantean voice of The Waste Land – to apply […]
Right to be forgotten?
If you’ve used Google to look for a personal name during the last few months you’ll have spotted this notice at the foot of some pages of search results: Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe. Click on the invitation ‘Learn more’ and you’ll discover that Google is attempting to […]
John Sell Cotman in Wales
There are a few great British artists we remember not for their continuous work over a lifetime, but for a short period of brilliant achievement in an otherwise (apparently) ordinary career. Two well-known examples are Samuel Palmer, in the case of the ‘visionary’ works painted during the early years of his stay in Shoreham, […]
Cymry’r Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf
Ydych chi’n chwilio am lyfr dibynadwy a darllenadwy yn Gymraeg sy’n dangos hanes y Rhyfel Mawr mewn geiriau a lluniau, o safbwynt pobl Cymru? Os felly, does dim angen arnoch chwilio ymhellach na Cymry’r Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf gan Gwyn Jenkins, cyfrol odidog a gyhoeddwyd yr wythnos ddiwethaf gan Y Lolfa. Dyma lyfr hardd (ie, hardd, […]
In the Chair
Today the e-book version of my book In the chair is published by Parthian Books. As the subtitle says, it’s in essence a practical guide: ‘how to guide groups and manage meetings’. Its aim is to help people who find themselves in the position of Chair to learn the craft and become successful. Strangely little […]
Wales Coast Path, day 12: Port Talbot to Swansea
It’s a warm midsummer morning and we’re back, the same quartet, in the centre of Port Talbot. By coincidence Radio 4 is broadcasting a programme called Playing the skyline in which the musicians Kizzy Crawford and Gwilym Simcock are taken on a boat to study the profile of Port Talbot from the sea and then […]
Community journalism: a MOOC case study
Courses provided online across the world at no cost to the student are causing waves in higher education. The Open & Online report to the Welsh Government (March 2014) called on higher education institutions in Wales to think carefully about what benefits they could derive from offering online courses, including MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), […]
Wales Coast Path, day 1: Chepstow from Caldicot
A day of dogs and bridges. Dogs first. We start from the railway station at Caldicot, three of us this time. The path to the motorway and across to the coastline is studded with notices, official and handwritten, about the absolute unacceptability of dog shit. We try to construct a history that accounts for this […]
National Theatre Wales’s ‘Mametz’: a review
As part of Wales’s commemoration of the First World War, and almost exactly two years ahead of the centenary of the battle, National Theatre Wales has ‘staged’ a version of the fierce struggle for possession of Mametz Wood. This battle was fought over six days in July 1916 between largely Welsh volunteer soldiers and highly […]
Wales Coast Path, day 2: Caldicot from Goldcliff
Like many coastal settlements on the Bristol Channel Goldcliff still remembers the disastrous year 1607. Behind the Farmers Arms in St Mary Magdelene’s Church – a shady avenue of limes leads to its porch – a brass inscription, now about three feet above ground level, reads (the dates refer to the old Julian calendar) as […]
