Archive for 2016
Wales Coast Path, day 53: Aberystwyth to Tre’r Ddôl
In Tre’r Ddôl I lock the car and tie up my boots, while the others make for the bus stop. Walking over the bridge I look up and see the bus is already there and about to leave. I have to break into a run to catch it. C explains that the driver – Lloyds […]
Wales Coast Path, day 56: Aberdyfi from Tywyn
It’s early afternoon. The Lloyds Coaches bus from Aberdyfi lets us off in a lay-by, near a school on the outskirts of Tywyn. We’re on Neptune Road. Somewhere ‘over there’ is the town centre, and ‘over here’ is the sea. We head for the latter, past the terminus of the Tal-y-llyn railway and some low, […]
The case of Sir Martin Sorrell
From time to time the world of big business suffers a flurry of concern about the remuneration of chief executives. Recently shareholders of the advertising company WPP worked themselves into a mini-lather about the pay of the company’s boss, Sir Martin Sorrell. Sorrell’s annual salary is £1,5000,000. In March this year he gained a share award […]
Geiriaduron a Karl Marx
Digwydd bod yn swyddfeydd Gwasg Gomer yn Llandysul rai wythnosau yn ôl, a dod o hyd i hen gyfaill, D. Geraint Lewis. Roedd camerâu Heno yn yr adeilad, i ddathlu cyhoeddi llyfr mawr, a doedd dim cyfle cael sgwrs. Achos y dathlu oedd y llyfr mwyaf a gyhoeddwyd yn hanes y cwmni, sef llyfr gan […]
Me, myself and I
Billie Holiday and Lester Young had as close and creative a musical friendship as any two people could. All agree: the pair themselves, their friends and musical colleagues, their biographers, and anyone else with a view. How can you get a proper sense of that friendship, 70 and 80 years after the event? The scattered […]
A Roman poet in west Wales
Martial – Marcus Valerius Martialis – was a first century Roman poet. He came to live in Rome from Augusta Bilbilis, near Calatayud in modern Spain, and made his name through his hundreds of short poems or ‘epigrams’. Witty, punchy and far too foulmouthed and sexually explicit for broadcast on Radio 4, only now are […]
Romancing Wales
Forget MOMA New York. The place to be for the next three months is MOMA Machynlleth. There you’ll find a collection of paintings and other works, from the eighteenth century to the present, that will give you as much visual pleasure and intellectual provocation as any exhibition on at the moment. The title of the […]
Wales Coast Path, day 14: Mumbles from Oxwich
A spring morning. Six paces from the car and we’re standing, four of us, on the beach at Oxwich. Calm sea, a light airflow from the south east, and, best of all, sun – a star banished from sight during the darkest, warmest, wettest winter in memory. Our only mistake is neglecting to notice the […]
The destruction of culture: a plea to Swansea Council
What makes a city a city? I mean, in the sense of a particular, distinctive city. Its people, certainly, its geography, landscape and architecture, also its economy and politics. But what really sets a city apart from its neighbours is its culture – that network of traditions, customs, institutions and habits, most of them with […]
Brexit: a Martian sends a postcard home
My dearest brothers and sisters, It is two years since you did me the honour of despatching me on a voyage across the solar seas to inspect what the Britons call their ‘mother of parliaments’. I must own that, reviewing my previous report to you, I cannot absolve myself of an embarrassing naïveté about this […]
