Author Archive: Andrew Green
A painting by Vivienne Williams
1 Jug You know me well enough, so you think – White, sure, handle as a band, Standing just where I was put. You think you have me taped. You’ve the advantage of greater height, Enough to see my inside’s cool blue. I sense it gives you comfort, simple me Answers to your need for […]
A letter from Kampala
A few days ago a letter came from Kampala, Uganda. It’s still lying on the table inside the front door, with its envelope. I haven’t put it in the bin for recycling, and nor have I thought about replying to it. It continues to lie there. What follows tries to explain why. The brown envelope, […]
Some books I read in 2016
If last year was a desperate time in the public world, there were plenty of comforts closer to home. As always, reading was one of them. These days I read more than I have since I was a teenager, with the added advantage that if I find a book unreadable I’m now happy, time and life […]
The new eschatology
As 2016 comes to an end the heavens are full of what Flann O’Brien’s great scientist De Selby called ‘black air’. A long night, it appears, is about to fall on two continents. In the United States a plutocratic bully and egomaniac with the crudest social and political attitudes is about to take power, unrestrained […]
Paul Nash
The big Paul Nash exhibition now on at Tate Britain is a great show. Not just because it’s an unusually big and comprehensive review of his work, but because it raises so many interesting questions – about the part of an artist in homegrown and international traditions, about art’s relationship with the state in times […]
Cynulliad neu Senedd?
Yn ddiweddar iawn cyhoeddodd Elin Jones AC, Llywydd Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru, wahoddiad inni leisio ein barn am gynnig i newid enw’r Cynulliad. Ei dadl yw bod y Cynulliad, dros y bymtheg mlynedd a mwy ers ei sefydliad, yn haeddu enw sy’n fwy urddasol a chywir na’i enw presennol, wrth i’r pwerau sy ganddo gynyddu (bydd […]
Cadbury capitalism
All my life I’ve been a chocolate addict. The high point of a visit to my granny’s at Howden was when she would open a secret drawer and give me some. At home my mother used to hide bars in a high cupboard, well away from a small boy’s fingers. I repeated the trick when […]
Against heritage
Having spent a big chunk of my adult life trying to help look after bits of it, I’ve developed a strong dislike, bordering on contempt, for the word ‘heritage’. Why, I wonder? Etymologically it’s an innocent enough word – something inherited, passed on from one individual or community or age to another. So what’s so […]
Magnus Maximus, man and memory
Doing some research recently on the Roman fort and settlement of Segontium I found myself face to face with a Roman emperor, Magnus Maximus. His story is interesting but not unusual. Later memory of him, especially in his guise as Macsen Wledig, is singular. His face stares out of coins he had minted to cement […]
Cribarth
It’s the morning of the Pumpkinification of Donald Trump. Three of us have fled the bloggers, tweeters and trolls, to the head of Cwm Tawe. We park in Ystradgynlais, near Ysgol Golwg y Cwm, and walk up to the track of the old Swansea Vale Railway. This and the Brecon and Neath Railway it connects with […]