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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…
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Hwyl fawr i’r byd cyhoeddus?
Ar ddydd Mercher nesaf bydd y Canghellor George Osborne yn cyhoeddi’r canlyniadau o’i adolygiad o wariant cyhoeddus. Mae’n argoeli bod yn achlysur tyngedfennol. Fel dywed William Keegan, y newyddiadurwr economaidd, yn gyson, daeth y Ceidwadwyr i rym, yn 2010 ac eto…
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Moby-Dick and the poor devil of a Sub-Sub
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) is a book that, once read, will never leave you. Its themes are as close as a book’s themes can be to the essence of being human. Its symbol – ‘symbol’ is a poor choice of…
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Two Svalbard flights
The most remarkable place on the planet I’ve visited, in the summer of 2005, is the Svalbard archipelago. Svalbard lies half way between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole, between 74 and 81 degrees north, far within…
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Peter Lanyon’s gliding paintings
If you want to escape from the madness of central London – a frequent need, in my experience – you could do worse than visit the Courtauld Gallery. It’s usually quiet, its home is a handsome and quirky corner of…
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Croeso, Ioan Tran, welcome!
A long bare road, Ioan bach, you’ve tramped, Dark months at sea, to meet us in this flash Of sudden day. You fled the lost land, and camped On deck through China, Red and Middle seas, dashed By Biscay storms…
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British values
British values are back in fashion. They were introduced by Gordon Brown during Tony Blair’s Labour government: We can find common qualities and common values that have made Britain the country it is. Our belief in tolerance and liberty which…
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John Pawson’s visual inventory
Most of the books I’ve bought over the years lie on a table, sometimes for months, read or unread, before they find their way to the shelf. But there’s one, bought on impulse three years ago, that has never left…