Archive for 2020

A walk to see Melangell

August 21, 2020 4 Comments
A walk to see Melangell

It’s an airless morning in the dog days of August, and the temperature is already around 23 degrees.  I’m setting out from Lake Vyrnwy on a pilgrimage – a walk over the hills to the church and shrine of St Melangell in Cwm Pennant. Of all the Welsh saints Melangell comes at the top of […]

Continue Reading »

Coleridge’s ginger wine

August 14, 2020 0 Comments
Coleridge’s ginger wine

Some think that the Notebooks are Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s masterwork.  In them he would jot any thoughts that occurred to his omnivorous, lightning-fast mind, wherever he was.  Snatches of poetry, quotations from other writers, jokes, lists of works he would write (most remained unwritten), apothegms, descriptions of landscapes, recollections, fragments of philosophy, memos to himself […]

Continue Reading »

Openreach: what’s it good for?

August 7, 2020 1 Comment
Openreach: what’s it good for?

It sounds so positive as a name, doesn’t it?  Openreach.  Open reach.  Imagine an arm extended in friendly welcome or offering a helping hand to someone in need.  An organisation, surely, that exists only to add to the sum of human happiness.  ‘Connecting you to your network’, says the website, ‘we believe everyone deserves fast […]

Continue Reading »

Cymru annibynnol: un arall o blaid

July 31, 2020 0 Comments
Cymru annibynnol: un arall o blaid

Pwy ydych chi?  I ba wlad ych chi’n perthyn? Am flynyddoedd, os digwyddodd rhywun holi – a gwrthod derbyn tawelwch, neu’r ateb ‘dinesydd y byd’ – fy ateb fu ‘Prydeiniwr’.  Albanes oedd fy mam.  Daeth fy nhad o Swydd Efrog, a bues i’n byw yn Lloegr tan yn 21 mlwydd oed.  Cymru fu fy nghartref […]

Continue Reading »

Emily Dickinson’s ‘What care the Dead’

July 24, 2020 4 Comments
Emily Dickinson’s ‘What care the Dead’

When I’m distracted or glum I often reach for the poems of Emily Dickinson. I’ve an old copy of Thomas H. Johnson’s complete edition, published in this country by Faber.  It’s less of a book and more of a box.  With its stocky build and 770 pages it looks like a box of postcards.  You […]

Continue Reading »

Six Classical

July 17, 2020 3 Comments
Six Classical

Things were different when we reached the sixth form.  Before then the teaching principle our school followed was ‘punch as many nails of knowledge into their dense skulls as possible, and some of them may stick there’.  ‘Turpe nescire’ – it’s a disgrace to be a dunce – was the school’s motto, and factual ignorance […]

Continue Reading »

John ‘Walking’ Stewart, an extreme pedestrian

July 10, 2020 1 Comment
John ‘Walking’ Stewart, an extreme pedestrian

In his time Foster Powell was known for mighty feats of pedestrianism.  But his achievements pale in comparison with those of a rather younger contemporary, John ‘Walking’ Stewart (1747-1822).  While Powell’s stage was mainly limited to England and Scotland, Stewart walked over large parts of the globe.  As well as his wanderings he was known […]

Continue Reading »

Cornelius Varley in Wales

July 3, 2020 3 Comments
Cornelius Varley in Wales

Among the many artists who came to draw and paint in Wales around the turn of the eighteenth century, Cornelius Varley is yet to receive just attention.  The pictures he made in Wales are fresh, delicate and strong, the work of a young man with great visual intelligence who reacted with instinctive wonder and clarity […]

Continue Reading »

Foster Powell, the great pedestrian

June 26, 2020 0 Comments
Foster Powell, the great pedestrian

When he was 21 years old Samuel Taylor Coleridge came to Wales for a walking tour with his Cambridge friend Joseph Hucks.  In a letter written in Denbigh in July 1794 to Robert Southey he summarises the trip so far, and writes, From Bala we travelled onward to Llangollen, a most beautiful village in a […]

Continue Reading »

Chaos describ’d

June 19, 2020 0 Comments
Chaos describ’d

These days chaos as a concept has been captured by mathematics and physics. (Sometimes it gets re-exported to the popular imagination through tropes like the butterfly effect.)  But before that it was available to anyone.  It was especially attractive to philosophers, theologians and mystics, and to creative people like writers and artists. Chaos has always […]

Continue Reading »