Window dressing

by | Sep 25, 2019 | museums, people, travel

Evenings are now invading afternoon as the northern hemisphere tips into the darkest days of the year – a time of melancholy. I was born in the depths of winter and suffer from the loss of daylight. Christmas is three months away, but already I yearn for the bright...

A Country Feast

by | Sep 19, 2019 | General interest, history, Italy, travel

We were told that the mill where we have taken our olive harvest for years was hosting a supper in aid of the restoration of the local church. ‘Why don’t you come?’ I was asked to pay at the local bar, but they only wanted my name and how many in our group. We were to...

Wattle and Daub

by | Jul 17, 2019 | art, General interest, history, people, travel

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the indefatigable German immigrant in the 1930s who was passionate about English vernacular architecture, founded the indispensable Penguin guides to the buildings of England’s towns and villages. It may be legend or fantasy that he wished to...

Landscape

by | Jul 3, 2019 | art, Fashion, General interest, history, people, poetry, travel

As a child, the Nottinghamshire novelist D.H. Lawrence used to watch his father walking slowly back home up the dew-strewn pastures between his mining village and the pits after a night shift and later wrote, ‘that is the landscape of my heart’. Those words came to...