The July issue of Chronicles contains my travelogue about Lothian – Iron Age equestrians, Traprain Law, the legend of the saltire, Rosslyn Chapel bizarrerie, Mary Queen of Scots, Covenanters, Edinburgh cemeteries, Scottish independence, Greyfriars Bobby, Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta…
Posts Tagged → Chronicles
“Pity Poor Bradford”
“Pity poor Bradford” Bolling Hall has squatted on its plot since the fourteenth century, hunched against the wind and rain of the West Riding – a North Country architectural essay in dark yellow sandstone looking warily down a steep hillside onto Bradford’s vale. Old though the building is, the estate’s foundations go deeper than Domesday,… Continue reading
Me on Dr. Johnson in the Hebrides
Latest article for Chronicles – “An Englishman in his Near Abroad” The August issue of Chronicles has my article on Samuel Johnson’s celebrated trip to the Hebrides – seven pages of Pictish/Celtic legend, Culdees, Vikings, golden eagles, sea-storms, and of course the great man at his most relaxed and clubbable. Not available on line, so you will need… Continue reading
Latest article for Chronicles – “Pity Poor Bradford
The June issue of Chronicles contains my article “Pity Poor Bradford” – a travelogue about the West Riding and ideas of the English North, touching on everything from the Normans to Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill and Peter Davidson via Civil War apparitions and the Industrial and Immigration Revolutions. Not available on line, sadly – but then… Continue reading
My latest article for Chronicles
Identity and Appearances, my latest article for the marvellous Chronicles, is now on-line – although I believe not for very long, unless you are a subscriber (which if you aren’t you ought to be). http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2015/November/39/11/magazine/article/10829682/
The Leopard at large – Lampedusa’s Letters from London and Europe
The Leopard at Large Letters From London and Europe Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Richmond (Surrey): Alma Books 203 pp., £14.99 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was the last prince of his long and languid line, but soon after his death he became one of the first names in 20th-century Italian letters. The Leopard, his 1958 novel… Continue reading
Homing in on England – Michael Wood’s The Story of England
Homing in on England The Story of England—A Village and Its People Through the Whole of English History Michael Wood, London: Penguin 440 pps, £20 Michael Wood begins with a quotation from Blake: To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit. This line betokens his aim, which is to zero in on one small English… Continue reading
As I went walking down Broadway…
As I went walking down Broadway… Cities, like men, are embodiments of the past and mirages of unfulfilled dreams Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Matrix of Man, 1968 The subway train clanked and screeched out of the darkness at last into stretched autumnal sunshine. I rattled northwards in an emptying carriage gazing down on nameless nondescript streets, and… Continue reading