Author Archive: Andrew Green
Bigism
The Big Mac, which celebrates its fortieth birthday this year, must have started it. The obsession with bigness. By now we take it for granted, without a conscious thought. Everything you get is going to be big, by default, unless you make a special plea for small. Even then you might get something that’s only […]
‘Caitlin’
Wrth i ‘flwyddyn Dylan’ ddirwyn i ben – ar ôl misoedd o ddathliadau dwys sy wedi ymylu ar fod yn ‘Dylanolatri’ – mae’n briodol iawn bod peth sylw yn cael ei roi i’w wraig Caitlin. Nos Fawrth yn Volcano yn Abertawe fe welais berfformiad byw, rhyw awr o hyd, o’r enw ‘Caitlin’, sy’n dramateiddio’r berthynas […]
Anselm Kiefer and Rembrandt van Rijn
Visit the big retrospective of Anselm Kiefer in the Royal Academy and it’s unlikely that you’ll quickly forget it. Which is apt, because memory, personal and especially collective, is the big theme that runs through all his work since he began his career as an artist in 1969. For Kiefer memory is seldom direct or […]
Vivienne Williams
Still life as a genre has a long history. Pictures of plenty – fruits of nature arranged by human hand – are common on Roman painted walls and mosaics. Renaissance artists picked out collections of food, natural and prepared, from the incidental details of medieval paintings and placed them centre stage. The golden age of […]
Y lle gwag
Tua milltir o’n tŷ ni, ar ymyl y brif ffordd i lawr i’r pentref, mae lle gwag. Rhyw erw o dir gwastad rhwng dau dŷ. Gefeilliaid yw’r tai – adeiladau golygus wedi’u gosod dipyn oddi ar y ffordd, â bargod eang, a theils coch yn gorchuddio’r rhan uwch o’u waliau. Yn wreiddiol, mae’n amlwg, gardd […]
Nightwalking
The literature of walking is large. It’s grown quickly in recent years, in part as an offshoot of the ‘new nature writing’. Most of it, though, is concerned with walking in the light of day. Nightwalking has received much less treatment. Frédéric Gros, in his recent A philosophy of walking (2014) fails to mention it. […]
Delft in four colours
Orange Orange is the Dutch colour. But to see it in Delft you need to lift your eyes above the roads and canals to the tops of the buildings. Big bright orange pantiles run in vertical rows down the small hipped roofs of many houses, each of which is different in size and height from […]
Bombs over Iraq, then and now
1920s The Ottoman Empire collapsed after its defeat in the First World War, and the victorious British took control of Mesopotamia. In April 1920 the League of Nations granted them a mandate, effectively imperial rule until the country was ‘mature’ enough for independence, to administer the whole area, now renamed Iraq. Even before the mandate, […]
Parliament: a Martian sends a postcard home
My dearest brothers and sisters, You have dispatched me to London at an opportune time. The North Britons have but lately decided in a plebiscite not to withdraw themselves from their ancient yoking or ‘union’ with the South Britons – but only by a hair’s breadth. What contagion can possibly have taken hold of almost […]
Wales Coast Path, day 51: Aberaeron to Llanrhystud
Another Aberaeron start, but this time we’re walking to the north. 10 September, and it’s another perfect day. Neither of us can remember such a summer’s end: warm, still and sunlit. Aberaeron, so careful of its landward appearance, turns its back on the sea. Admittedly the shore is shingle, but the monotonous concrete wall and […]