Archive for 2020
Circles of light
A virus, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us, is ‘an infectious, often pathogenic agent or biological entity … able to function only within the living cells of a host animal, plant, or microorganism’. It’s a dark and invisible thing, that threatens suffering and destruction. William Blake knew about the terrors it would bring: O Rose […]
One hill, two painters
Peter Wakelin’s book Refuge and renewal: migration and British art, written to accompany his exhibition of the same name – its run in MOMA Machynlleth was sadly curtailed by coronavirus – is a rich source of information about artists who fled to Britain to escape the Nazis. A name he mentions in passing on three […]
Ar ôl Covid-19: beth?
Dyw’r firws ddim eto wedi cyrraedd ei anterth. Ond eisoes mae llawer o sylwebwyr yn edrych ymlaen at y cyfnod ôl-Govid-19 ac yn gofyn y cwestiwn, a fydd pethau’n hollol newydd, yn ein bywyd cyhoeddus, ar ôl i’r afiechyd gilio, neu, a fydd popeth yn dychwelyd i’r patrymau a fu? Mae’n gwestiwn da. Y man […]
Lludd and the three plagues
Lludd, son of Beli Mawr (‘Lud’ in English) is king of the Island of Britain, and a wise and successful ruler. From his capital, Caer Lludd (London), he takes care of his subjects, housing them well and supplying them with ample food and drink. One of his brothers, Llefelys, is king of France. So begins […]
Jazz recordings: gwallter’s top ten
A while ago I suggested ten favourite blues recordings you might try. All of them were tracks I’d treasured, most for over forty years. So here are ten more, this time old jazz favourites, in chronological order. Actually, these are numbers three to twelve in my list, because my top choices, Billie Holiday and Lester […]
A journey around my room
One of the many effects of the coronavirus pandemic has been to put a stop to all but the shortest and most qualified kinds of walking. But if social distancing means that your personal movement is restricted to walking around your own home (and garden, if you have one) and little more, that doesn’t mean […]
Thucydides on the plague in Athens
In the bath the other morning I happened to catch an interview with the novelist Kamila Shamsie. She was asked what books she’d want to have with her if the coronavirus forced her to self-isolate for a lengthy period. She had some interesting choices. And she recommended that, instead of raiding supermarkets for toilet rolls […]
Darllen: a oes argyfwng?
Ar 7 Mawrth dathlon ni Ddiwrnod y Llyfr unwaith eto, gyda digwyddiadau mawr mewn ysgolion, siopau llyfrau a llyfrgelloedd. Ond ar drothwy’r ŵyl, cyhoeddodd y National Literacy Trust (NLT) adroddiad brawychus sy’n dangos bod darllen er pleser wedi dirywio yn sylweddol unwaith eto yn y DU. Dim ond 25.8% o blant a phobl ifanc (oedran […]
Grass for pillow: early Japanese travel poems
Last year Penguin published a selection of classical Japanese writings about travel. Travels with a writing brush, edited by the Australian translator Meredith McKinney, didn’t receive much attention at the time, but it’s a wonderful and wonderfully varied introduction to poetry and prose written in Japan between the seventh and seventeenth centuries. For anyone who’s […]
Laura Cumming and Degas’ ‘The Bellilli Family’
Many people have praised Laura Cumming’s book On Chapel Sands: my mother and other missing persons (Chatto & Windus, 2019). It begins, like a novel, with a sudden disappearance: of her three-year-old mother, in summer 1929, from a sunny beach on the Lincolnshire coast. Like a detective story it pieces together what happened, and tries […]
