gwallter

  • One of the most useful things an historian can do is to restore to us people from the past who have unjustly slipped from our collective memory.  Until recently an outstanding figure of early European science had vanished from sight…

  • My dearest brothers and sisters Five years have passed since I wrote to you about my last visit to Earth.  You will remember that I ended my report by counselling you not to send me on a third mission to…

  • The simplest way to get there is from the top of the road that climbs up from the bay.  Turning left at the signpost, you walk along a broad path.  At one point it’s ankle-deep in mud, like most Gower…

  • This week Patrick McGuinness reminded his Twitter followers of a two-part poem he published in his 2004 collection The Canals of Mars, called ‘Two paintings by Thomas Jones’.  The first part, ‘A wall in Naples’, goes like this: I look…

  • Alfred Tennyson was born in Lincolnshire, and lived there throughout the first part of his life.  The portrait of him that always comes to mind is the photo Julia Margaret Cameron took of him in 1865, which shows him as…

  • Yn gyson mae’r cwmni pôl pinion YouGov yn tracio bwriad pleidleisio pobl ar draws Prydain.  Dangosa’r canlyniadau mwyaf diweddar (4-5 Ionawr 2021) fod y Blaid Geidwadol a’r Blaid Lafur yn gyfartal (39% yr un).  Sut ar y ddaear y gallai…

  • The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century saw the rise of local ‘literary and philosophical institutions’ throughout the British Isles.  They aimed to bring together like-minded people to discuss issues of the day.  The label…

  • The year of Covid has changed many social habits, for good and ill.  Some habits are quite new and unexpected.  One of the most recent in our area has been the rise of cold-water sea bathing. I tend to go…

  • By now the ‘invented tradition’ is itself a tradition.  Since Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger published their edited collection The invention of tradition in 1983, we’ve become familiar with the idea that rituals, histories and beliefs that seem age-old were…

  • In a room a woman, about thirty years of age, sits alone. The room is plain, with two bare walls, dark and grey.  Its furniture is sparse, just a chair and a round table with round brass handles.  The woman…

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