gwallter

Author: Andrew Green

  • On integrity

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    Andrew Green
    in

    In writing a forthcoming book about the art of chairing I’ve found myself thinking about the idea of integrity. (Integrity, I maintain, is one of the essential characteristics that any good Chair should possess.) What is integrity?  Does it mean anything substantial when used in relation to human behaviour?  Why should it be important in…

  • The overcoat

    The overcoat

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    Andrew Green
    in

    I was sitting reading in the front room yesterday when a sharp rap on the window made me jump.  A man stood at the door.   Only the sharp features of his face were visible; the rest of his body was protected from the cold wind and rain by a thick shell of industrial yellow.  Behind…

  • Cof, dychymyg, enwau lleoedd

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    Andrew Green
    in

    I’r Cymry mae enwau lleoedd yn bwysig.  Bron bob mis adrodda’r cyfryngau ryw ffrae neu’i gilydd amdanyn nhw: Varteg (Saesneg) v Y Farteg (Cymraeg) neu, yn fwy arwyddocaol, Cwm March v Stallion Valley (bathiad anffodus newydd sbon).  I’r rhan fwyaf o bobl pethau i’w trysori ydyn nhw, o achos eu bod yn cadw cof hanesyddol…

  • Is it true that public services can’t cooperate?

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    Andrew Green
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    Richard Sennett’s Together: the rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation (2012) is one of those books that’s so full of acute observations, surprising examples and novel connections that it stays long in the memory and sparks all kinds of thoughts, months after an initial reading. Sennett is a distinguished US ethnographer, but part of the…

  • Death of a satirist

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    Andrew Green
    in

    News of the death of Simon Hoggart a couple of weeks ago caused widespread dismay.  For so many years he skewered politicians with wit and ridicule in his parliamentary sketches and on the radio it seems hardly possible that it’s all come to an end so suddenly.  Who will we have in future to talk…

  • Whistler’s long voyage: Rotherhithe to Battersea

    Whistler’s long voyage: Rotherhithe to Battersea

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    Andrew Green
    in

    ‘Whistler and the Thames’, which comes to an end at the Dulwich Picture Gallery on 12 January, is the best sort of exhibition: one that places right in front of your retina an artist previously spotted only with peripheral vision. James McNeill Whistler was born in Lowell, Mass. in 1834, moved with his family to…

  • Llais tawel Dafydd Pritchard

    Llais tawel Dafydd Pritchard

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    Andrew Green
    in

    Aderyn prin yw llyfr newydd gan y Prifardd Dafydd John Pritchard.  Felly dylid croesawu ei gasgliad diweddaraf o gerddi, Lôn Fain (Barddas, 2013), yn frwd iawn. Ddaw ystyr llythrennol ‘Lôn Fain’ ddim yn eglur inni tan y tudalen olaf, ond mae’r bardd yn ein paratoi at y gerdd derfynol, ‘Wrth fedd fy mrawd’, trwy’r casgliad…

  • Wales Coast Path, day 6: Penarth from Barry

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    Andrew Green
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    At Bridgend we change to the miniature Platform 1A, gateway to all true adventures on the Vale of Glamorgan line.  It’s cold and the fog is thick.  The train creeps across the Porthkerry viaduct, unseeing and unseen. We leave at Barry – Barry Central to be precise, since like all respectable towns Barry has several…

  • John Fahey, American primitive?

    John Fahey, American primitive?

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    Andrew Green
    in

    Like many teenagers of the late 1960s I was first awakened to what would become my most treasured music by the late John Peel.  His weekly programme Top Gear on Radio One was unmissable.  It was almost the only place you could come across American musicians ignored by the mainstream (Peel had worked on a…

  • The Library of Birmingham

    The Library of Birmingham

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    Andrew Green
    in

    The city of Birmingham is famous for reinventing itself.  No sooner are buildings thrown up than plans are hatched to raze them and start again.  A good case is the central library.  The ‘old’ library, an inverted concrete pyramid of stupendous brutality opened in 1974, has been abandoned in favour of a brand new block…