Weddings, town halls and local democracy
Last weekend our daughter Catrin got married, in Islington Town Hall. It was a fine choice for a wedding. The Town Hall is a large neoclassical building facing the main street, opened in the mid-1920s. The exterior is plain and conventional enough, though its unusually large, long windows suggest an open and welcoming attitude. It’s […]
On integrity
In writing a forthcoming book about the art of chairing I’ve found myself thinking about the idea of integrity. (Integrity, I maintain, is one of the essential characteristics that any good Chair should possess.) What is integrity? Does it mean anything substantial when used in relation to human behaviour? Why should it be important in […]
The overcoat
I was sitting reading in the front room yesterday when a sharp rap on the window made me jump. A man stood at the door. Only the sharp features of his face were visible; the rest of his body was protected from the cold wind and rain by a thick shell of industrial yellow. Behind […]
Cof, dychymyg, enwau lleoedd
I’r Cymry mae enwau lleoedd yn bwysig. Bron bob mis adrodda’r cyfryngau ryw ffrae neu’i gilydd amdanyn nhw: Varteg (Saesneg) v Y Farteg (Cymraeg) neu, yn fwy arwyddocaol, Cwm March v Stallion Valley (bathiad anffodus newydd sbon). I’r rhan fwyaf o bobl pethau i’w trysori ydyn nhw, o achos eu bod yn cadw cof hanesyddol […]
Is it true that public services can’t cooperate?
Richard Sennett’s Together: the rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation (2012) is one of those books that’s so full of acute observations, surprising examples and novel connections that it stays long in the memory and sparks all kinds of thoughts, months after an initial reading. Sennett is a distinguished US ethnographer, but part of the […]
Death of a satirist
News of the death of Simon Hoggart a couple of weeks ago caused widespread dismay. For so many years he skewered politicians with wit and ridicule in his parliamentary sketches and on the radio it seems hardly possible that it’s all come to an end so suddenly. Who will we have in future to talk […]
Whistler’s long voyage: Rotherhithe to Battersea
‘Whistler and the Thames’, which comes to an end at the Dulwich Picture Gallery on 12 January, is the best sort of exhibition: one that places right in front of your retina an artist previously spotted only with peripheral vision. James McNeill Whistler was born in Lowell, Mass. in 1834, moved with his family to […]
Llais tawel Dafydd Pritchard
Aderyn prin yw llyfr newydd gan y Prifardd Dafydd John Pritchard. Felly dylid croesawu ei gasgliad diweddaraf o gerddi, Lôn Fain (Barddas, 2013), yn frwd iawn. Ddaw ystyr llythrennol ‘Lôn Fain’ ddim yn eglur inni tan y tudalen olaf, ond mae’r bardd yn ein paratoi at y gerdd derfynol, ‘Wrth fedd fy mrawd’, trwy’r casgliad […]
Wales Coast Path, day 6: Penarth from Barry
At Bridgend we change to the miniature Platform 1A, gateway to all true adventures on the Vale of Glamorgan line. It’s cold and the fog is thick. The train creeps across the Porthkerry viaduct, unseeing and unseen. We leave at Barry – Barry Central to be precise, since like all respectable towns Barry has several […]
John Fahey, American primitive?
Like many teenagers of the late 1960s I was first awakened to what would become my most treasured music by the late John Peel. His weekly programme Top Gear on Radio One was unmissable. It was almost the only place you could come across American musicians ignored by the mainstream (Peel had worked on a […]