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The adapted text of a response to the award of an honorary doctorate by the Open University in a graduation ceremony held in the Wales Millennium Centre on 12 June 2015. Annwyl gyfeillion, rhaid imi ddweud ar y cychwyn ei…
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Wales Coast Path, day 27: Pendine to Amroth
10:50am. A bus stop on the coast road in Amroth. The Silcox Coaches bus, ten minutes late, trundles round the corner from the hill into the village. Its driver, a middle-aged woman whose accent doesn’t sound local, brakes reluctantly for…
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Wales Coast Path, day 26: Laugharne to Pendine
The castle walls glow in the morning sun. Below, the shoreline car park is almost full, with a small market selling bric-à-brac and small plants. But within minutes the four of us are on our own, on the path round…
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Wales Coast Path, day 24: Llansteffan to St Clears
A cloudy, cool morning, but the beach car park at Llansteffan is already filling with dogs and children and older citizens tying up the laces of their walking books. Flying in the face of commercial self-interest, the Beach Shop and…
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Goya and the Philippines junta: power mocked
The town of Castres has several claims to fame. At its centre handsome rows of old tanners’ and weavers’ houses overhang the river Agout. It was where the socialist leader and peacemaker Jean Jaurès was born in 1859. It has…
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Woad and French museology
Magrin is the name of an ordinary enough village not very far east of Toulouse. Just outside it is a low conical hill. On top of the hill are the ruins of a château, built in the middle ages and…
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Wales Coast Path, day 35: Neyland to Herbranston
On their way home C and H drop me in Neyland, for a solo walk to Herbranston. Neyland’s a modest and workaday town, considering that its effective founder was a megalomaniac. Isambard Kingdom Brunel chose it as the coastal terminal…
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Wales Coast Path, day 36: Herbranston to Dale
After a coffee in the Yacht Club we catch the rackety mid-morning minibus from Dale to Hebranston, two villages and two long creeks away. The few other passengers seem to be fellow-walkers. Our driver’s an abstracted, taciturn man with a…
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Wales Coast Path, day 38: Dale from Marloes
We’re back at Musselwick Sands, this time exposed by the lower tide, and we’re joined by J for the day, on a tour of the Marloes peninsula. Still the cold wind blows, ostensibly from the west, though it’s actually turned…
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Wales Coast Path, day 39: Marloes from Broad Haven
This is another two-car day. I attempt to park Car 1 in Marloes outside the Lobster Pot pub. The landlord, a middle aged man with a surly look, raps on a window, then unlocks the door and shouts across to…