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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…
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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…
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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…
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In defence of permanent institutions
It’s a truism to say that the destruction of trust is at the heart of societal decline. We’ve known for a long time that politicians come bottom, or close of bottom, in league tables of professions in whom the public…
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Llangeitho mewn lluniau
Digwydd bod yn Llangeitho y dydd o’r blaen, ac yn y pentrefan gerllaw, Capel Betws Lleucu. Pentref digon tawel yw Llangeitho heddiw, ac fe welais neb bron ar y strydoedd. Ond ganrif a hanner yn ôl roedd pethau’n wahanol: llawer…
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Down the rabbit hole: an early example from Gower
Alice’s adventures in Wonderland – in Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript it was entitled Alice’s adventures under ground – is probably the best-known of all tales about a child passing through a hole or tunnel in the ground to reach another…
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Lucian Freud and Celia Paul
Lucian Freud isn’t one of those big artists whose star quickly fades after death. To judge by a visit to the Royal Academy exhibition of his self-portraits (it finishes tomorrow), his work still attracts plenty of public interest. The paintings…
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A fruit bat, displayed
This is one of those important, but well-concealed exhibitions that attracts large numbers of visitors mainly by word of mouth. When I was there, in the cramped basement of the Wallace Collection last weekend, I was surprised to be sharing…
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At Strata Florida: Gerald’s vision of male beauty
I’ve been reading the account written by Gerald of Wales of the tour he made, on horseback and on foot, around the perimeter of Wales in the year 1188. The manuscript – there are actually three versions – is usually…
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Writing as self-torture
In Prague Franz Kafka, then 28 years old, wrote this paragraph in his diary on 12 October 1911: Yesterday at Max’s [Max Brod, K’s close friend] wrote in the Paris diary [K visited Paris in September 1911]. In the half-darkness…