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My favourite place in England is the hamlet of Brigflatts, a few miles from Sedbergh. The river Rawthey flows nearby, and the few houses cluster around the Friends Meeting House, one of the oldest Quaker meeting houses in the country…
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Blues recordings: gwallter’s top 10
Richard ‘Rabbit’ Brown, James Alley blues, 1927 James Alley is in New Orleans. Like Louis Armstrong Brown was a native of the Storyville district of that city. He only recorded six songs, but this one, recorded in his home…
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Drinking coffee in the desert with Charles Doughty
On 10 November 1876, having taught himself Arabic, a 31 year old Englishmen called Charles Montagu Doughty set off from Damascus to travel alone across the Empty Quarter of the Arabian peninsula via Meda’in Saleh to join the Haj, the…
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Cofio am Osi Rhys Osmond
Y dydd o’r blaen rhoddodd ffrind lyfr ail-law imi, ychwanegiad i’m llyfrgell fach o lyfrau ar gelfyddyd cerdded. Doedd y gyfrol, I know another way: from Tintern to St Davids (Gomer, 2002) ddim yn gyfarwydd imi. Casgliad yw e o…
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How to say goodbye: a picture by Gerard David
The National Gallery of Ireland contains many wonders. As in most big art galleries, though, you can walk past wall after wall of old masters without any of them leaving much of an impact on the eye or memory. Then…
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The Eagle flies again
On our coastal walks C and I have discussed most things under the sun. One of them, on a Gower trip in early September, was the Eagle comic, which we both read as young lads. Now C has lent me…
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Sport is not the answer
According to the NHS Britain is the most obese nation in western Europe. A quarter of adults are obese. Levels of obesity have risen threefold on thirty years, and if trends continue half the population will be obese by 2050.…
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Glenn Gould’s ‘The idea of north’
This week, as part of its Northern Lights season, Radio 3 broadcast an hour-long documentary made by the pianist Glenn Gould for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1967 called The idea of north. It turned out to be as absorbing…
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Wales Coast Path, day 28: Amroth to Tenby
8:30am on a dark December Friday, and we’re driving west, three of us. Rain, unforecast, runs into us from the west. The stub of a rainbow over St Clears soon erases itself. At Llanddowror the Tâf has burst its banks…
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The Home Rule All Round movement
To get a swift appreciation of the whole sweep of Welsh history for a current project, I’ve been re-reading John Davies’s great Hanes Cymru / A history of Wales (rev. ed. 2007). It’s a big book but the pleasure of…