A postcard from warmer climes.
As I write this, I’m in the middle of a brief holiday in southern Spain, in Seville to be exact. It is warmth, sunshine, the unlikely smell of Orange trees in the air, Spain at its over easy best and a complete break from the snow and bitter cold us hardy souls in the northern … Read more
The decline of popular science journals.
We are creatures of habit and pleasure. When we find something of pleasure, we tend to revisit it with regularity. Despite what a large part of the mainstream media might have you believe, not all pleasure starts at the gullet and ends at the genitalia, though eating well and making love, are of course pastimes … Read more
About writing.
I do the thinking thing very well. For so much of my life and for so many things in it, I think very carefully before I leap and I’m good at it. Over the years, people have learnt to trust and depend on that and because I love them, that’s something special I can do … Read more
Words, ideas, primary sources, history and a bit thrown in about writers.
I write and I read books. Either of those activities will inevitably lead you to think about the nature of the written word. Up until quite recently, it was the only way your thoughts and ideas could survive your death without any sort of distortion. Nobody was half-remembering, interpreting what you said or bending it … Read more
