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After the 2016 Brexit referendum I suggested that the historian Thucydides, in the fifth century BC, can help us to understand how democracies have the capacity to change their decisions on major policies – and both the capacity and the…
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Writing for affect
By accident I happened on four late-night radio voices discussing ‘consent’. Their focus was Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel-in-letters, Pamela; or, Virtue rewarded, and Martin Crimp’s current stage production at the National Theatre, When we have sufficiently tortured each other, which…
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Lying diagonally in bed
Book 6 of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy contains an insight that few, if any, novels – or indeed any works of non-fiction – published before or since, have achieved. In chapter 39, a message reaches the house of Tristram’s parents…
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Dilyn Iolo
Bore mwyn, di-haul o Ionawr, a dyma bedwar ohonon ni’n cychwyn ar Daith Gerdded Treftadaeth Iolo Morganwg. Taith gylchol o ryw bedair milltir a hanner yw hon, un o gyfres o deithiau cerdded wedi’u dyfeisio gan Gyngor Bro Morgannwg, gyda…
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Allies against slavery: Ignatius Sancho and Laurence Sterne
Ignatius Sancho was one of the most prominent black Britons of the eighteenth century – and without doubt the most multi-talented. Born in Africa, according to his own account (or on board ship, according to his biographer, Joseph Jekyll), he…
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An unusual will: Laurence Sterne’s ‘The fragment’
As far as I know, my father produced only one publication. Its title was Notes on making a will and it was a pamphlet of just four pages (a single leaf folded with a white card cover). The publisher, according…
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Architecture in Wales: a dying art?
John B. Hilling has just published a new book, The architecture of Wales, from the first to the twenty-first century (University of Wales Press, 2018, £27.00). It’s an updating and rewriting of a book he produced in 1976 called The…
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Sir John Perrot: two faces of a ruffian
One of the images included in Wales in 100 objects is a small oil painting by an unknown artist, now in Haverfordwest Town Museum, of the Elizabethan magnate Sir John Perrot. I chose this particular portrait, painted long after Perrot’s…
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‘Llyfr Glas Nebo’: dystopia/wtopia
Pan ofynnodd Cymru Fyw i nifer o lenorion yn ddiweddar am enwebu’r llyfrau y bydden nhw’n eu dethol i’r hosan ’Dolig, un llyfr safodd allan: Llyfr Glas Nebo, nofel fer gan Manon Steffan Ros a enillodd y Fedal Ryddiaith eleni…
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Making Hay: diary of a first-time speaker
1 Talk of the Devil An invisible voice apologises: Marcus Brigstocke regrets he’s unable to be with us tonight. Instead, a cloaked figure bursts on to the stage. There’s a white flash of outsize teeth and ghoulish eyes. Yes,…