Maria finished this radiant quilt today. I love it!
Friday 27 November 2020
Saturday 21 November 2020
AA Survey, Email
The AA*, Survey
Questionnaire email,
20 November 2020
Thanks, AA, but what did you say?
“We know you’re no longer with us,
but your opinion still means a lot”.
The Ethiopian Crisis. Tigray Conflict.
Ethiopia Crisis: High stakes for Africa - Could the battle for Tigray end up destabilising the entire Horn of Africa? BBC World Service, The Real Story
Explaining Tigray, BBC World Service, The Fifth Floor - What is behind the conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray region?
Tuesday 17 November 2020
Sappho's Leap
I write at some length about Sappho's supposed (apocryphal) suicide leap in my book, The Ionian Islands and Epirus, A Cultural History (pages 3-10). I discuss a number of poems on the subject and this 'landscape of the imagination'.
At the time of writing the book, I had not discovered the poem by Edwin Muir:
Monday 9 November 2020
Cornwall with Simon Reeve, BBC TV
Episode 1 - an important programme to see, relevant to the whole of the UK . BBC iPlayer
Tragic in places.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pb6s/cornwall-with-simon-reeve-series-1-episode-1
Saturday 7 November 2020
Adam Morse, Seeing Differently, BBC Radio 4
"Adam Morse, who is registered blind, explains how he directed an award winning film by seeing differently. When he was diagnosed at the age of nineteen with a rare eye condition, he feared at first that his ambitions to act and direct might be thwarted. A decade later, his dreams are being fulfilled and he hopes to blaze a trail for other artists with disabilities", BBC programme information.
Listen to this inspiring programme from Four Thought:
Monday 2 November 2020
Reading Preferences: On Novels and Non-Fiction
These days I rarely turn to a novel, out of choice. For many years (with very exceptional cases) I have found the essays, letters, non-fiction and autobiographical writings of novelists more interesting and absorbing than their fictional works.
Just for starters, here are some of my most-read works by noted novelists:
Alan Sillitoe:
Mountains and Caverns, selected essays by Alan Sillitoe
Life Without Armour, An Autobiography
Kingsley Amis:
The Amis Collection, Selected Non-Fiction 1954-1990
John Fowles:
Wormholes, Essays and Occasional Writings
The Journals, Volume 1 and 2
Lawrence Durrell:
Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller, A Private Correspondence
Prospero's Cell
William Golding:
The Hot Gates
A Moving Target
Anthony Burgess:
Little Wilson and Big God: Being the First Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess
You've Had Your Time: Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess
Sunday 1 November 2020
Songs of the Seal
Thinking of Sammy the Seal, where is he now?
Two haunting songs: