19/10/2022:

• Videos now run immediately when you click the links from this page. Try it!
• Photos.

Fens

Trees

---

10/10/2022:

• Video:

  Lee Valley again

• Photos.

Norfolk

Space

Norfolk

---

27/09/2022:

Photos:

September

---

29/08/2022:

• Video:

  Lee Valley Olympic in the playboat

• Photos.

More August

---

15/08/2022:

Photos:

Moor

Gannets

Lake

Wood

---

09/08/2022:

Photos:

Rest of July

South Cambridgeshire

Norfolk

---

12/07/2022:

Photos:

Cambridgeshire

Norfolk

---

04/07/2022:

Photos:

The rest of June's photos

---

05/06/2022:

• Video:

  Lee Valley Olympic in a Ripper 2

• Portrait photos from 2007-2012 were appearing unrotated in modern browsers, for obscure reasons. This has been fixed.
• Photos.

A Jubilee concert

---

02/06/2022:

• Notes now added to all the kayaking videos.
• Photos.

Suffolk and Cambridgeshire

Norfolk

Yorkshire and Derbyshire

---

15/05/2022:

• Some kayaking videos now have pop-out notes.
• Photos.

Ely, etc.

Norfolk

1997

---

03/05/2022:

Video:

Lee Valley Olympic course - one full run, and other moments

---

24/04/2022:

Photos:

Eye

---

19/04/2022:

Photos:

Fens

Suffolk

1996

---

28/03/2022:

Photos:

Norfolk

Suffolk

Essex

---

21/03/2022:

Photos:

Portsmouth

---

18/03/2022:

Photos:

Fens

Multum in parvo

Yorkshire

---

07/03/2022:

Photos:

Fens

---

21/02/2022:

• Video:

  Lee Valley Olympic course

• Photos.

Norfolk

---

13/02/2022:

Photos:

Cambs.

Lynn

More Cambs.

Norfolk

---

10/01/2022:

• A review of Monica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me by John Sutherland

  "Philip Larkin was England's most famous poet of the second half of the Twentieth Century. His reputation is such that there is a readership for biographies not only of him, but also of his girlfriends..." More

• The top menu of the site is now "sticky" when you scroll down each page. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry, it's not that interesting.
• Photos.

Dales

Back in Fenland

---

02/01/2022:

• Video:

  Filey Bay

• Photos.

More of December

Boggy ground

---

19/12/2021:

• A review of The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides by James Boswell

  "This is Boswell's account of the ten-week trip to the Inner Hebrides on which he embarked with Samuel Johnson in the autumn of 1773. It forms an illuminating contrast with Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland..." More

• Photos.

Short days

---

09/12/2021:

• Video:

  River Dee, Horseshoe Falls to Llangollen

• Photos.

Cambridge

---

23/11/2021:

• Video:

  Lee Valley again

• Photos.

Autumn trees

---

08/11/2021:

Photos:

Cambridgeshire

Peak District

---

01/11/2021:

• Videos:

  A few more videos

• Photos.

That was October

---

02/10/2021:

• A review of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland by Dr. Johnson

  "In 1773, Samuel Johnson joined his young lawyer friend James Boswell on a tour of the Inner Hebrides. He had been talking of such a journey for many years - so long that Boswell had begun to doubt whether he would ever get round to it, especially as the elder literato was now 63..." More

• Photos.

The rest of September

Wet cycling

---

12/09/2021:

• Video:

  Playboat surfing, Filey Bay

• Photos.

Yorkshire coast

Cycling

---

03/09/2021:

Photos:

Cambridgeshire	West Yorkshire	Cycling around Morecambe Bay	West and North Yorkshire
Derbyshire	1995

---

23/08/2021:

• A review of Impossibility by John D Barrow

  "With every century that has passed, science and technology have given us more insight into, and control over, the world around us. The momentum seems to be towards an eventual understanding of everything that there is to be understood..." More

• Photos.

A wood on a gloomy evening

1994

---

16/08/2021:

• Video:

  Lee Valley Olympic course

• Photos.

Cambridgeshire

Another hill outside London

London

---

07/08/2021:

• Videos:

  Kayaking the Upper Tryweryn

• Photos.

Tryweryn

Cadair Idris

Mid-Wales

---

29/07/2021:

Photos:

More July

1993

---

10/07/2021:

Photos:

More 1981

Early 1982

---

02/07/2021:

Photos:

Tour du Cambridgeshire de l'Est

---

19/06/2021:

Photos:

Cycling

1981

---

15/06/2021:

Photos:

Paddling and pedalling in East Anglia

---

13/06/2021:

Photos:

A hill outside London

---

09/06/2021:

Photos:

Late May, early June

---

29/05/2021:

• Video: playing on the sea,

  Sheringham, Norfolk

• Photos.

A day in May

---

18/05/2021:

Photos:

More May

---

05/05/2021:

• Reviews of a Bond film a day.
• Video: with the playboat on the

  Lee Valley Legacy course

  .
• Photos.

The last of April

The start of May

---

25/04/2021:

• A review of That Old Country Music by Kevin Barry

  "Kevin Barry, the jacket blurb reads, "has been acclaimed as one of the world's most accomplished and gifted short story writers". It doesn't say by whom, but Barry would presumably agree..." More

• Photos.

More April

---

05/04/2021:

• A review of Judgement Day by Penelope Lively

  "Intellectual mother-of-two Clare Paling moves to the Oxfordshire village of Laddenham when her successful husband gets a new job. Stuck for something to do during the day, she gets involved in a church fundraising campaign, bringing to bear on the activity both an interest in eccesiastical history and a cool-headed religious scepticism that set her apart from the other participants..." More

• Photos.

March and early April

---

06/03/2021:

• A review of Trawler by Redmond O'Hanlon

  "For his fourth book, Redmond O'Hanlon had been planning a jungle trip to New Guinea, but the project fell through, and he had to choose a less ambitious adventure, closer to home. He settled on the idea of joining a trawler crew in the middle of winter..." More

• Photos.

The rest of January

February

---

09/01/2021:

Photos:

Walking

Icebreaking

Lunchbreaking

Snow

---

31/12/2020:

• A review of 1971: Never a Dull Moment by David Hepworth

  "David Hepworth presents a month-by-month account of the musical releases and events of 1971, the year that rock, according to him, "came of age". Certainly, the year was rich in classic records, including Carole King's Tapestry, Nick Drake's Bryter Layter, David Bowie's Hunky Dory, Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, Joni Mitchell's Blue, the Stones' Sticky Fingers, and Led Zeppelin IV..." More

• Photos.

Cambridgeshire

Yorkshire

---

18/12/2020:

Photos:

Fens	Photos from 1992

---

06/12/2020:

Photos:

Bingley in the rain

Burwell Fen

Out and about

---

27/11/2020:

• A review of The House with Old Furniture by Helen Lewis

  "Evie Wolfe and her husband Andrew move to Pembrokeshire to start a new life after their eldest son is murdered in a drugs feud. Andrew, a senior civil servant, keeps disappearing back to London to attend to affairs of state, and probably to meet his old flame Caroline..." More

• Some long-overdue updates to the Pop CD catalogue

• Photos.

More November

---

13/11/2020:

Photos:

Suffolk

Wicken Fen

---

11/11/2020:

Photos:

November round-up

---

31/10/2020:

Photos:

Bury St. Edmunds

Hunstanton

More Bury St. Edmunds

Fens

---

22/10/2020:

• Music video: "Deep Dive"
• Photos.

Cambridgeshire	West Yorkshire	North Yorkshire	West Yorkshire
Cambridgeshire

---

04/10/2020:

• A review of A Fabulous Creation by David Hepworth

  "Another good book by this elder statesman of British rock journalism. A Fabulous Creation is a personalised history of the long-playing vinyl record, beginning in 1967 with the release of Sgt..." More

• Photos.

Another day in East Anglia

---

30/09/2020:

• Video: Lee Valley Olympic course.

• Photos.

Fens	Lee Valley	More fens	More Lee Valley
More fens

---

13/09/2020:

Video: Sea surfing in Filey Bay, Yorkshire.

---

10/09/2020:

Photos:

Baildon

Yorkshire. It's so bracing.

Common

---

02/09/2020:

• A review of Uncommon People by David Hepworth

  "A fascination with the lives of pop stars is hard to justify: only occasionally do they have much of interest to say, and only occasionally are they agreeable people. But three generations have grown up with pop music as the soundtrack to their youth, and the cheap but intense high of listening to the music they loved became conflated with their attitudes to the makers of that music..." More

• Photos.

Cambridgeshire

Derbyshire

---

23/08/2020:

• A review of Life of Pi by Yann Martel

  "Piscine Molitor Patel grows up in the Indian province of Pondicherry, where his father is a zookeeper. To silence the teasing of his schoolmates about his eccentric name, Piscine calls himself Pi..." More

• Photos.

Cambridgeshire

---

10/08/2020:

• A review of Autism and Asperger Syndrome: The Facts by Simon Baron-Cohen

  "Simon Baron-Cohen of is one of the world's leading researchers into autism and Asperger's Syndrome. The first edition of this book, published in the early 1990s, covered just classic autism..." More

• Photos.

Yorkshire cycling and walking

Cambridgeshire cycling (on a day of 35-degree heat)

Norfolk paddling and walking

Cambridgeshire flâning and walking

---

30/07/2020:

Photos:

More days

---

25/07/2020:

• A review of The Rock and Roll A Level by David Hepworth

  "In the mid-1980s, the BBC rock show The Old Grey Whistle Test was presented by two music journalists: the affable, engaging Mark Ellen, always ready with a smile and a witty quip; and his friend David Hepworth, whose deadpan, nerdy delivery could reliably induce somnolence in the two-minute intervals between acts. A natural television star he wasn't, but Hepworth's musical knowledge is beyond doubt, and he showcases it in this lightweight but stimulating compendium of rock facts, organised as sets of ten questions on different "subjects" (Art, Economics, Hospitality Management, etc.)..." More

• Photos.

This week's cycling

---

18/07/2020:

Photos:

Oldies: Hiking Hadrian's Wall, November 1991

Oldies: December 1991

---

14/07/2020:

• A review of One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown

  "Fifty years after the Beatles split up, their story continues to fascinate. When they hit the music scene in 1963, no pop group matched them for songwriting talent, musical range or charisma..." More

• Photos.

East Cambridgeshire

Suffolk

Paddling at Ely

---

28/06/2020:

Photos:

A few more days

---

22/06/2020:

Photos:

Eye Eye. What's Diss?

---

20/06/2020:

• New page of Videos with Music and one video so far.

• A review of Iedereen is Muzikaal by Henkjan Honing

  "I was hoping that this book about musical cognition would be up to the standard of Aap Slaat Maat by the same author, but I was somewhat disappointed. Its subject is musical cognition in humans, and it was only after its publication that Henkjan Honing dug deeper into the evolutionary origins of musicality, or proto-musicality, in humans and other animals that is covered by the later book..." More

• Photos.

Fens and beech trees

---

15/06/2020:

Photos:

Fens

River Lark

River Cam

Oldies: France, September 1991

---

09/06/2020:

Photos:

Living like a duck	Fens	Cambridge	Poppies
Oldies: Prague, June 1991	Oldies: Cheshire and Wales, summer 1991

---

02/06/2020:

Photos:

Yorkshire

Fens

---

26/05/2020:

Photos:

More cycling sights

York

Bank holiday twenty-miler

---

20/05/2020:

Photos:

Houses on hills, geese and gozzers

---

19/05/2020:

Photos:

Cycling in North Yorkshire

... and in West Yorkshire

---

15/05/2020:

Photos:

More Bradford Burbs

---

08/05/2020:

Photos:

Cycling

Cycling and walking

Cycling into North Yorkshire

---

05/05/2020:

Photos:

Two more days

---

03/05/2020:

Photos:

More Tour de Yorkshire

---

29/04/2020:

Photos:

Yorkshire, still

---

27/04/2020:

Photos:

Today

---

26/04/2020:

Photos:

Today

---

25/04/2020:

Photos:

Today

---

24/04/2020:

Photos:

Hills/cat

---

22/04/2020:

Photos:

Up hill and down dale

---

21/04/2020:

Photos:

Life on the towpath

---

19/04/2020:

Photos:

More of West Yorkshire by bike

---

13/04/2020:

Photos:

From the daily exercise ration

---

10/04/2020:

Photos:

Lockdown miscellany

---

25/03/2020:

Photos:

A walk uphill

---

23/02/2020:

Photos:

Cambridge

Cycling in the south Fens

---

19/03/2020:

A review of The Fens by Francis Pryor

"Francis Pryor is a former archaelogist, well-known in the UK for his regular appearances on the television show Time Team. His most famous project was the excavation of Flag Fen, a large Bronze Age site to the east of Peterborough..." More

---

17/03/2020:

• Videos now have thumbnails.
• Photos.

West Yorkshire

---

09/03/2020:

• Video: Salmon Leap Falls, River Tees.
• Photos.

Teesdale

---

23/02/2020:

Photos:

Ely

Clare

---

09/02/2020:

• A review of Strong Imagination by Daniel Nettle

  "Behavioural scientist Daniel Nettle begins this book with a quotation from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream": Q::The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
  Are of imagination all compact. The idea that madness and creativity are connected is an ancient one, and in Strong Imagination Nettle investigates the connection in the light of modern scientific and anthropological evidence..." More

• Guest review: Murder on the Malta Express by Carlo Bonini, Manuel Delia and John Sweeney

  "More than two years have passed since the heinous murder of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Despite the early arrest of three suspects, thought to be the perpetrators of the deed, rather than the brains behind it, nobody has been brought to trial..." More

• Photos.

Gunpowder Park. Dangerous!	Ely. Overcast.	Lidgate. Abstemious (in the 15th Century).	Swaffham Prior
Lichfield. Nostalgic.

---

31/01/2020:

A review of Aap Slaat Maat (The Evolving Animal Orchestra) by Henkjan Honing

"Human beings are the only animals that make music, but something in our biological evolution must have laid the groundwork for our ability. Charles Darwin wrote, "The perception, if not the enjoyment, of musical cadences and of rhythm is probably common to all animals, and no doubt depends on the common physiological nature of their nervous systems." Was he right? Henkjan Honing, a cognitive scientist in the field of musical perception, followed up Darwin's conjecture..." More

---

24/01/2020:

Photos:

March-May 1991

---

20/01/2020:

• Kayaking video from August 2019 - Loisach, Germany.
• Photos.

Newmarket

Fens

---

15/01/2020:

Photos:

The sticks, Suffolk

Hawk

---

06/01/2020:

Photos:

Yorkshire and Cumbria

---

02/01/2020:

Photos:

Otley

Paddling in Derbyshire

More of West Yorkshire

Oldies: Germany, early 1991

---

27/12/2019:

• Guest review: The Great Romantic: Cricket and the Golden Age of Neville Cardus by Duncan Hamilton

  "Besides the obvious one about the overall quality of this biography of arguably England's finest writer on cricket, one other question immediately springs to mind when considering this book. Could it be of any interest to those with little or no interest in that sport? The first point to be made is that Cardus's journalism was not restricted to cricket..." More

• Photos.

Cottenham

Yorkshire

---

22/12/2019:

Kayaking videos from August 2018 - Dora Baltea and Rutor, Italy.

---

17/12/2019:

Photos:

Essex's posh end

The road to Lode

---

13/12/2019:

Photos:

It's time for Tees

Bolton Abbey

Oldies: Freiburg im Breisgau (1990)

---

11/12/2019:

Videos: River Tees

---

01/12/2019:

Photos:

To Norfolk for fifteen minutes on the sea

---

27/11/2019:

Photos:

Paddling the Dart

---

25/11/2019:

Videos of the Upper Dart.

---

22/11/2019:

• More of the Lee Valley Olympic white water course - reconfigured for next year's Tokyo Olympics.
• Photos.

Post-paddle nature chill-out

Oldies from September 1990

---

15/11/2019:

Photos:

Keighley

Lichfield

Cannock Chase

Old photos - Dordogne, summer 1990

---

04/11/2019:

• A compilation of splashings at the Lee Valley Olympic white water course
• A review of Cathedral by Raymond Carver

  "This collection of short stories saw Carver's transition to his mature style. His protagonists have arrived in the middle of life with the sense that their best years are behind them: trapped in boring marriages, alcoholic, or smoking too much weed, they spend their days wondering whether anything better lies beyond the disappointment of their current predicaments..." More

---

27/10/2019:

• New! Kayaking videos
• Photos.

Cambridge

Old photos from October 1989 to June 1990

---

18/10/2019:

• Do you want to know about my kayaks? Of course you do.
• Photos.

Suffolk photo roundup

---

06/10/2019:

A review of Homo Faber by Max Frisch

"Swiss writer Max Frisch is best known in the Anglophone world for his plays Andorra and Biedermann und die Brandstifter (The Fireraisers). Both plays deal with themes of self-deception, complacency and guilt; they portray communities and individuals that "allow things to happen", much as, to critical eyes, Switzerland sat back comfortably through history, making money, while wars raged around it..." More

---

28/09/2019:

Photos:

Yorkshire

An abortive paddling trip to Wales :(

A rear-view lap of the Olympic course

---

10/09/2019:

Photos:

Cambridge

Paddling in the Alps/European road trip

East Cambridgeshire

---

22/08/2019:

• A review of Michael Palin's first volume of diaries

"These diaries largely consolidate Michael Palin's status as the "Nice One" among the Monty Python's Flying Circus crew. When there were disagreements and tensions, it was he who stepped in as mediator, and he took up more than his share of the slack left by his less reliable co-stars - in particular Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Eric Idle..." More

• A guest review of The Bridge over the Drina by Ivo Andrić

  "If asked to name a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature it seems unlikely that many, at least in western Europe and North America, would immediately come up with the name of Ivo Andrić, the 1961 laureate. This is unfortunate, not just for literary reasons, but also because, as a recent biography by the German journalist Michael Martens shows, his other life in politics was extremely remarkable, even by the standards of the twentieth century..." More

• A guest review of Le Rapport de Brodeck by Philippe Claudel

  "On the evidence of numerous recent books and films, Germany and especially the Nazi era remain an important subject for French writers and film makers. One example is the 2009 television series Un village français which depicts life in a northern village under the German Occupation..." More

• Photos.

Old photos from the summer of 1989

---

06/08/2019:

Photos:

Moor	Cruisin' the Washburn

---

29/07/2019:

Photos:

Yorkshire

Cambridge

Paddling at Lee Valley on the hottest day on record!

Wales

---

08/07/2019:

• A review of Notes from a Big Country by Bill Bryson

  "I suppose an author must be doing something right for me to read three of his books back to back. Notes from a Big Country is a compendium of Bryson's columns for the Mail on Sunday magazine that he wrote after his move back to the States in 1995..." More

• Photos.

Cycling to the county's edge - and beyond!

They can't keep me away - triaging a cycle route to work, on a Sunday

---

26/06/2019:

• A review of Neither Here nor There by Bill Bryson

  "After Notes from a Small Island, I was disappointed by this earlier book by Bryson. It is the account of an erratic journey through Europe, and while it has some of the wit of his later works, it has a great deal more of the misanthropy..." More

• Photos.

Yorkshire

---

15/06/2019:

• A review of Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

  "This book is so well-known that for a long time I almost felt as though I'd read it. My image of Bill Bryson was of a bluff, upbeat Yankee purveying witty but bland observations on the quaint ways of the British people, unintentionally patronising them with reminders of what a noble, scenic and history-filled island they inhabit, and enjoining them to desist in their self-deprecating ways and to be a bit more openly proud of their country..." More

• Photos.

East Cambridgeshire

---

05/06/2019:

Photos:

Cycling out of Cambridge

---

01/06/2019:

Photos:

Fens	Sea kayaking on Anglesey

---

08/05/2019:

Photos:

Southern Yorkshire Dales

---

06/05/2019:

• A review of Schimmen rond de Parula (Ghosts Around Parula) by F Springer

  "F Springer was the pen name (Dutch writers seem to like their pen names) of Carel Jan Schneider, a civil servant and diplomat who spent his childhood in the Dutch East Indies, and worked for three years as an administrator in western New Guinea before his career moved him elsewhere. He draws on his knowledge of the Indonesian archipelago in this fascinating and sobering tale of cultural conflict..." More

• Photos.

A session at HPP

Bingley

---

27/04/2019:

Photos:

Yorkshire

Action shots of fenland cycling

---

17/04/2019:

A review of I Can't Stay Long by Laurie Lee

"Laurie Lee acquired fame with his first volume of autobiography, Cider with Rosie, in 1959 - an evocative account of his childhood and youth in the idyllic Gloucestershire hills. I was one of thousands of late-twentieth-century English schoolchildren forced to read it at too young an age..." More

---

10/04/2019:

Photos:

Lincolnshire

Yorkshire

Cambridge

Wales

---

23/03/2019:

A review of Loners by Sula Wolff

"The term "Asperger's Syndrome" is in common use today, but back in 1995, there was no widely-accepted label for the psychological condition whose subjects are characterised by solitariness, the pursuit of obsessive interests, and difficulties in social interaction. We all knew the type, though - the "nerd"..." More

---

06/03/2019:

Photos:

Waltham, Massachusetts, and a bit of Connecticut	A week in Waltham, MA	A tour of the cradle of the American Revolution, Massachusetts	The North Shore of Massachusetts
Boston, Massachusetts	Flying home

---

18/02/2019:

Photos:

Lee Valley Olympic course

---

11/02/2019:

• A review of Olijfje by Helga Ruebsamen

  "Helga Ruebsamen was born to a German father and a Dutch mother in the Dutch East Indies. Her family was in the Netherlands when the Second World War broke out, and was unable to return home..." More

• A guest review of L'ordre du jour by Eric Vuillard

  "I read this Goncourt Prizewinning work in the original French, in which it is entitled L'ordre du jour. This term can also be rendered as 'The Agenda', which, as I hope to show, might in some respects be a better translation..." More

• What sort of thing happens on a Thursday? Now you can find out with the "Days of Week" Photos Statistics widget:

  

• Photos.

Wharfedale

Cambridge

Fens

---

28/01/2019:

Photos:

Gunpowder Park, Waltham Abbey, Essex

---

22/01/2019:

Photos:

Wales

---

13/01/2019:

• A review of Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years by Sue Townsend

  "I continue my non-chronological journey through Adrian Mole's adult diaries. The Wilderness Years was the first full volume of Mole's journals to be published after the narrator hit his twenties, and Sue Townsend had the challenge of supplanting the humour of the first two books, which derived substantially from their naive teenage perspective, to a more sophisticated adult context..." More

• Photos.

Chevin

A grey day in Leicestershire

---

05/01/2019:

A review of Titaantjes by Nescio

"JHF Grönloh was a Dutch businessman who secretly wrote short works of fiction and published them under the pen name of Nescio (Latin: "I don't know"). He is famous in the Netherlands, but virtually unknown in the English-speaking world - hardly surprising since no English translations of his work existed until 2012..." More

---

04/01/2019:

Photos:

West Yorkshire

Abortive kayak surfing, East Yorkshire

---

30/12/2018:

Photos:

Derbyshire, Part 1

Ilkley Moor

Derbyshire, Part 2

---

26/12/2018:

Photos:

Paddling in Durham and Cumbria - GoPro photos added

Thaxted, Essex

---

20/12/2018:

A review of Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sue Townsend

"It's autumn 2002, the New Labour Government is threatening war on Iraq, and Adrian Mole has nervously cancelled a holiday in Cyprus after Tony Blair's announcement that Iraq could pound the island with weapons of mass destruction within forty-five minutes. Eternally naive, Mole writes to the Prime Minister asking for proof of the claim, required by the travel agency to redeem his deposit of £57.10..." More

---

15/12/2018:

Photos:

Cambridge

Reach

Durham and Yorkshire

---

18/11/2018:

• A review of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

  "In Joseph Conrad's most famous novella, the narrator Marlow recounts a journey he made as the captain of a small steam boat up a large central African river. Not knowing in advance the purpose of the boat's journey, he had a strange intuition that this region unpenetrated by civilisation would yield up to his inquisitive mind dark but fascinating secrets..." More

• Photos.

Cambridge

---

11/11/2018:

Photos:

Autumn in the Science Park

Yorkshire

Paddling in Lovejoy Country

---

28/10/2018:

Photos:

Cambridge

Suffolk

Ely

Lode

---

07/10/2018:

• Book review: Selected Short Stories by Guy de Maupassant

  "*** NOTE: This review contains spoilers *** A small selection of works by the prolific and influential master of the French short story. Containing just twelve pieces, most of them under ten pages long, this is an easy volume to get through, that conveys the preoccupations and range of this interesting author..." More

• Photos.

Wood

---

30/09/2018:

• Book review: Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain by Matthew Engel

  "Matthew Engel is probably best known as a cricket journalist, writing for The Guardian and then being editor of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack for twelve years, which surely means that he belongs to the high priesthood of cricket journalists. His writings have always been marked by trenchant criticism, not least of the follies of the game's administrators, and by humour; he once suggested that the England Test player Philippe Edmonds, not known for the cricketing equivalent of football's "work rate", if there is one, would have liked a contract involving "no heavy lifting"..." More

• Photos.

Cambridge

Yorkshire

---

15/09/2018:

• Book reviews:

  • Map Addict by Mike Parker

    "A fascination with maps feels, to those who have it, a vaguely embarrassing thing to admit to. Yet once you've taken the leap, it's surprising how many fellow cartophiles come out of the woodwork..." More

  • The Making of an Englishman by Fred Uhlman

    "I have to begin this review of the autobiography of the artist and writer Fred Uhlman (1901 - 1985) by adding the sub-title "Erinnerungen eines deutschen Juden" (Memoirs of a German Jew) of the German edition, which I was obliged to read, as the out of print English original (Gollancz, 1960) proved inaccessible. This represents an ironic reversal because initially, in keeping with prevailing attitudes in the early years of the Federal Republic, no German publisher was interested and the first German edition only appeared in 1992 thanks to the Municipal Archive of Uhlman's native city of Stuttgart..." More

  • The Reunion by Fred Uhlman

    "This short work belongs to the genre of the novella, which means, in the German tradition at least, as countless lecturers have told countless undergraduates, that, to follow Goethe's precepts, it should be marked by an out of the ordinary event and, towards the end, by a significant turning point. The Reunion certainly fulfils these criteria..." More

• Photos.

Yorkshire

Fens

---

04/09/2018:

When you view chronological statistics from the Photos - Places pages -

- you can now expand years to show months:

---

31/08/2018:

Photos:

Alps, Days 6 and 7: Bourg-Saint-Maurice and the Isère Valley

Alps, Day 8: Up an Alp, and Chambéry

Alps, Day 9: Chambéry to Turin

Alps, Day 10: Flying home

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26/08/2018:

Photos:

Alps, Day 5: Italy to France with a cheeky paddle on the way

---

24/08/2018:

Photos:

Alps, Days 3 and 4

---

22/08/2018:

Photos:

Paddling in the Alps, Days 1 and 2

---

06/08/2018:

Photos:

Lee Valley

Fens

---

31/07/2018:

Photos:

Gargrave

---

24/07/2018:

Photos:

Paddling on the Suffolk coast

---

21/07/2018:

Review: What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz. About plants.

"Plants respond to light, odour molecules, gravity and electricity. Does this imply that they have senses, or even that they possess a rudimentary form of consciousness? The title of this book, and its chapter headings - "What a Plant Sees", "What a Plant Feels", "The Aware Plant" etc..." More

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18/07/2018:

Photos:

Tryweryn

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10/07/2018:

Photos:

North Norfolk

---

07/07/2018:

Photos:

Lee Valley White Water Centre

---

05/07/2018:

You can now view chronological statistics in the Photos - Places pages:

---

01/07/2018:

• A review of The Story of Oosterhuis by Belcampo.

  "Belcampo was the pen name of Herman Pieter Schönfeld Wichers, a Dutch author of H G Wells-style fantasy stories. Het Verhaal van Oosterhuis is the tale of a Dutchman who, on a professional expedition to the Indian subcontinent, falls down a ravine, miraculously survives, and is nursed to recovery among a tribe that lives in the bottom of the ravine..." More

• Photos.

Punters in Cambridge

---

30/06/2018:

Photos:

Upper Tryweryn

Views of Snowdonia

---

26/06/2018:

Photos:

Paddling the Lower Tryweryn

---

19/06/2018:

Photos:

South Cambridgeshire

Dalham, Suffolk

Yorkshire

---

02/06/2018:

Review: Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith. About octopuses.

"The cephalopods are a class of molluscs with two members - octopuses and cuttlefish - that have developed sophisticated nervous systems and high levels of intelligence, the only invertebrates to have done so. What makes them so interesting is that this intelligence developed along a separate evolutionary line from that of mammals and birds..." More

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31/05/2018:

Photos:

Almscliffe Crag

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20/05/2018:

Photos:

Cambridgeshire

Holme Pierrepont National Water Sports Centre

Yorkshire

Dalham, Suffolk

---

08/04/2018:

• There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. But the camera never lies. Where does that leave the new Photos Statistics page? Don't ask me.
• Guest review of Invicta: The Life and Work of Daphne Caruana Galizia , edited by Joseph A Debono and Caroline Muscat

  "In the immediate post-war period, in Britain at least, Malta was known as the plucky colony which had withstood against the odds the aerial bombardment inflicted upon it by the Axis powers and been rewarded with the George Cross. This award was even recognised by the newly created British Railways in 1948 with the addition of the initials GC on the nameplate of the locomotive named after the island..." More

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03/04/2018:

Photos:

Yorkshire

---

25/03/2018:

Photos:

Dalham, Suffolk

---

21/03/2018:

Photos:

Spring midwinter is its own season

---

15/03/2018:

Photos:

Scolt Head, Norfolk

---

04/03/2018:

Photos:

Snow hits Suffolk

---

01/03/2018:

Photos:

Cold snap

---

27/02/2018:

Photos:

Yorkshire

---

18/02/2018:

Photos:

Bury St. Edmunds

---

11/02/2018:

• A review of Beast by Paul Kingsnorth

  "A hermit living in a deserted building on a West Country moor wakes up one day out of a dream or trance, to find himself lame and scarred by marks that seem to have been made by a large animal. After recovering his powers of movement, the hermit, Edward Buckmaster, wanders about the moor, with the vague feeling of being in search of something..." More

• Photos.

Condom machine

Cambridge University freaks out

Windy wastes

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06/02/2018:

A review of France: A Nation on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown by Jonathan Miller

"This volume, written by a former Sunday Times journalist resident in France, consists almost entirely of short entries on a variety of topics relating to contemporary issues. These are presented alphabetically and in French, with the exception for no clear reason of 'European Union', since 'Union Européenne' would have hardly been more taxing to non-speakers of French than, for example, 'Professions Protégées', especially as there is always an English sub-heading to provide an explanation of the French term..." More

---

03/02/2018:

Photos:

Surf's up in Norfolk

---

31/01/2018:

Photos:

Wet weekend in Wales

---

22/01/2018:

Photos:

Gazeley, Suffolk

Paddling in Devon - GoPro photos added

Paddling in Durham - GoPro photos added

---

09/01/2018:

• A review of My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs by Kazuo Ishiguro

  "Just how short can a book be that readers will part with £5 for it? My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs is the text of Kazuo Ishiguro's Nobel Literature Prize acceptance speech, and comes in at just 36 small pages. It's a good speech, characterised by the restraint and decency that are hallmarks of Ishiguro's persona..." More

• Photos.

Humber

---

07/01/2018:

Photos:

Staffordshire

Baildon Moor

Wharfedale

---

02/01/2018:

Photos:

Final paddle of 2017: River Wharfe

---

30/12/2017:

• A review of How to Read Water by Tristan Gooley

  "This is a good idea for a book, but I'm not sure Tristan Gooley was the right person to write it. Gooley is an adventurer and "natural navigator", an expert at finding his way in the wilds..." More

• Photos.

West Yorkshire

Back on the River Tees

Keighley and Ilkley

Snow

---

24/12/2017:

Photos:

West Suffolk

---

11/12/2017:

Photos:

In the snish

---

06/12/2017:

Photos:

Durham

Yorkshire

---

27/11/2017:

Photos:

More trees

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20/11/2017:

Photos:

Trees

---

15/11/2017:

Photos:

Devon: Rivers Walkham, Tavy and Dart

---

08/11/2017:

• Update to "Cars I Have Known"
• Photos.

Yorkshire

---

02/11/2017:

A review of Changer l'oubli by Yvette Z'Graggen

"Yvette Z'Graggen was a Swiss author and broadcaster, born in 1922 to a German-speaking father and a Genevan mother. In this fascinating and moving memoir, she traces the family history of her father, Heinrich..." More

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28/10/2017:

Photos:

More from east Norfolk - the sticks of the sticks

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17/10/2017:

A review of Ein Jahr in London by Anna Regeniter

"The German publisher Herder has a series of books, "Reise in den Alltag" ("Journey into Everyday Life"), that go deeper than traditional travel writing by tasking their authors with year-long diaries of their times in foreign countries. I'm fascinated by the differences between inside and outside perspectives on countries - the essence of a nation is often best appreciated by those from elsewhere - so I snapped up this interesting-sounding account by a young German woman of her first twelve months in England..." More

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15/10/2017:

Photos:

East Norfolk

North Norfolk

---

09/10/2017:

Guest review: Die Hauptstadt by Robert Menasse

"At least two major German-language writers have written extensively about the European Union. One is the poet, essayist and occasional novelist Hans Magnus Enzensberger, probably best known outside Germany for his writing on the media and his coinage "consciousness industry" to describe them..." More

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08/10/2017:

A review of The Unexpected Professor by John Carey

"John Carey is a literary polemicist, a grammar school-educated Oxford don whose bêtes noires are academic and intellectual elistism. In his career as an English Professor at various Oxford colleges, he put his money where his mouth was, actively soliciting undergraduate applications from state schools, fighting to get the English curriculum updated to include more modern literature, and (as chair of a pan-University board) attempting to bring in line colleagues who refused to lecture on anything but their pet subjects..." More

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01/10/2017:

Photos:

Lee Valley Olympic whitewater course

---

24/09/2017:

• A review of What's for Tea? by Claudia Hunt - a German book about English.

  "A book in German, for Germans, about English. Claudia Hunt spent fourteen years in the UK, and here educates her compatriots in the nuances of English idiom - "English as you didn't learn it at school" is the book's German subtitle..." More

• Photos.

A photographic raid on West Suffolk

---

20/09/2017:

Photos:

Kayak surfing for dummies

---

17/09/2017:

• A review of Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian.

  "Patrick O'Brian wrote twenty novels featuring Jack Aubrey, an English sea captain in the Napoleonic Wars, and his ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin. The novels were slow to find a readership, but are now widely regarded as among the best historical novels in the English language..." More

• For the first time, a guest review - of Vernon Subutex, Part 1 by Virginie Despentes.

  "Having read on the German cultural website perlentaucher.de that Virginie Despentes is the author frequently regarded as capturing the reality of contemporary France, I managed on a recent visit to find the volume named above in the bookshop at Marseille Airport. The back cover of the Livre de Poche edition I bought even makes an implicit comparison with Balzac by taking about a "comédie inhumaine"..." More

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12/09/2017:

Photos:

Lincolnshire

Cruising the River Washburn

---

30/08/2017:

Photos:

Getting warm and wet in the Austrian Alps

Come-down Monday - stand-up paddleboarding on the Cam

---

17/08/2017:

Photos:

Yorkshire

---

07/08/2017:

Photos:

Devil's Dyke

---

03/08/2017:

• A review of Geological Structures by Chris and Helen Pellant.

  "An excellent introduction to geology. Starting with descriptions of the three main rock types - igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary - it goes on to explain the structural effects of folding, faults and unconformities..." More

• Photos.

King's College

---

23/07/2017:

Photos:

River Tryweryn, Wales

Lee Valley Whitewater Centre

---

09/07/2017:

Photos:

Yorkshire

Bug

Golden Ears

---

02/07/2017:

Photos:

Yorkshire

---

25/06/2017:

Photos:

Norfolk

---

19/06/2017:

Photos:

River Tryweryn, Wales

---

11/06/2017:

• A review of Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years by Sue Townend.

  "The Secret Diary of Adian Mole, Aged 13¾ was a publishing phenomenon of the early 1980s. Its subject - the daily tribulations and anxieties of an awkward, introspective teenager - was so rich in humorous potential that it's surprising nobody thought of it earlier..." More

• Photos.

Fens

Foamy pillows

Dyke

---

30/05/2017:

Photos:

Yorkshire

---

24/05/2017:

Photos:

Cambridgeshire

---

15/05/2017:

• A review of Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene.

  "Father Quixote, a lowly priest in a tiny Spanish town, helps out an Italian monsignor whose car has broken down, and is rewarded by being made a monsignor himself. While the church authorities consider where to move him to, he takes a road trip with the town's recently-deposed Marxist mayor, who is also at a loose end..." More

• Photos.

Lee Valley Whitewater Centre

---

05/05/2017:

• A review of Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

  "Jane Fairchild, a housemaid in the 1920s, is given the day off by her employers on Mothering Sunday. Being an orphan, she has nothing particular to do - until a telephone call from her lover summons her to a rendez-vous at his parents' house..." More

• Photos.

Yorkshire

---

27/04/2017:

A review of Keeping On Keeping On by Alan Bennett

"The third installment of Alan Bennett's miscellaneous non-fiction. About half of it is diary extracts; the rest consists of introductions to plays, articles and speeches written for miscellaneous occasions, and two scripts for plays that were never performed as intended..." More

---

17/04/2017:

Photos:

West Yorkshire

South Yorkshire

North Yorkshire

---

09/04/2017:

Photos:

Fens

---

26/03/2017:

• A review of What Are You Looking At? by Will Gompertz.

  "Will Gompertz is the BBC's slightly offbeat Arts Editor - that enthusiastic bald guy who cultivates an image so unapologetically and ironically unhip that it's almost hip. A sense of irony is no bad thing for a writer on modern art, and What Are You Looking At? is a well-pitched guide to the visual arts from the late Nineteenth Century to the early Twenty-first..." More

• Photos.

Cambridgeshire

---

12/03/2017:

Photos:

Paddling in North Wales

---

14/02/2017:

Photos:

Yorkshire

South Essex

---

30/01/2017:

Photos:

Three laps of the Dart Loop

---

22/01/2017:

A review of Beethoven for a Later Age by Edward Dusinberre

"Memoirs by non-professional writers can be shapeless and fragmentary, owing to the glut of potential material that competes for inclusion in a short space. Edward Dusinberre, first violin of the Takács Quartet, deals with this challenge by using Beethoven's string quartets as the framework for an account of his twenty years as a chamber musician..." More

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08/01/2017:

• A review of Don't Sleep, There are Snakes by Daniel Everett.

  "Daniel Everett spent thirty years, on and off, living with his family among the Pirahã Indians of Brazil. He was an Evangelical missionary, tasked with learning the Pirahã language so that he could translate the Bible into it..." More

• Photos.

Ilkley Moor

---

04/01/2017:

Photos:

Brontë country and Hockney country

Hippy country

---

01/01/2017:

• A review of Kafka 's The Castle .

  "Kafka's masterwork? Some critics think so. It's unfinished, full of internal inconsistencies, and difficult to read, but in conception it is certainly Kafka's most ambitious novel..." More

• Photos.

Yorkshire

---

27/12/2016:

Photos:

Paddling the River Tees - once more

---

05/12/2016:

Photos:

Paddling and walking in Teesdale

---

24/11/2016:

Photos:

Autumn in the Science Park

---

07/11/2016:

Photos:

Reach Wood

---

30/10/2016:

Photos:

Essex - surprisingly nice in places

---

24/10/2016:

Photos:

Swinsty Reservoir, North Yorkshire

Kirkstall Abbey

Harlow Carr, North Yorkshire

---

18/09/2016:

Photos:

Lee Valley Whitewater Centre

Yorkshire

---

22/08/2016:

Photos:

Amsterdam and Haarlem

---

13/08/2016:

Photos:

Sea kayaking taster session

---

08/08/2016:

Photos:

Back on the River Tryweryn

---

03/08/2016:

Photos:

A rare visit to Staffordshire, county of my youth

---

25/07/2016:

Photos:

Paddling up the River Cam

---

21/07/2016:

Photos:

Cambridgeshire round-up

---

03/07/2016:

Reviews of:

• The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. (Strictly speaking, a review of the bit I read before giving up.)

  "I try to finish every book I start, but sometimes the task is beyond me. There are some books that, while fascinating to dip into, are too long to contemplate reading in their entirety if I'm not to abandon every other reading project for months or years..." More

• One on One by Craig Brown.

  "Craig Brown is a humorist, best known for his spoof celebrity monologues in the British satirical magazine Private Eye. Against type, in One on One he adopts a restrained journalistic approach, describing 101 real-life meetings between famous people from the late 19th Century to the early 21st..." More

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20/06/2016:

Photos:

A poppy field	A village in Hertfordshire	Lee Valley Country Park	Lee Valley Whitewater Centre
Paddling in north Wales

---

04/06/2016:

Photos:

Yorkshire

---

29/05/2016:

• A review of European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche by Frank M Turner.

  "Frank M Turner was a Professor of History at Yale University. This book consists of fifteen of his lectures from a course for undergraduates..." More

• Photos.

Ely

---

07/05/2016:

A review of The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

"Note: Since writing the review below, I've learned that The Testament of Mary was written after Tóibín's play Testament. In the play, I gather that the lack of context for Mary's monologue is deliberate: her identity, and her son's, are initially withheld to create suspense..." More

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28/04/2016:

Photos:

The Backs, Cambridge

---

03/04/2016:

Photos:

Yorkshire

---

26/03/2016:

• A review of City of the Mind by Penelope Lively

  "Matthew Halland works for a firm of architects that is designing an office block in London's Docklands in the late 1980s. Visits to the grandiose new development, and to the sites of smaller-scale renovation projects, have Halland criss-crossing London daily, and give him the impetus to ruminate on the character of his city with an insider's eye..." More

• Photos.

River Cam

Ely

---

12/03/2016:

• A review of Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

  "A flawed but powerful novel. The first thing you need to know about it is that its protagonist, Antoinette Cosway, is the "mad woman in the attic" from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre..." More

• Photos.

Around Wicken, Cambridgeshire

---

28/02/2016:

Photos:

West Yorkshire

Lynford Arboretum, Norfolk

---

25/02/2016:

Photos:

Paddling in Teesdale

Richmond, Yorkshire

---

13/02/2016:

Photos:

Sutton Gault

---

06/02/2016:

A review of Le Chapeau de Mitterrand by Antoine Laurain

"Daniel Mercier, an ambitious accountant, finds himself alone in his flat one winter evening without his wife and children. Bored, he decides to treat himself to dinner in a fancy Parisian brasserie..." More

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31/01/2016:

Photos:

Cambridge

---

17/01/2016:

Photos:

Paddling the River Dart

---

05/01/2016:

A review of A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre

"The story of Kim Philby's exposure as a KGB agent and his subsequent defection to the Soviet Union is one of the most famous in espionage history, and has been related in many books before this one. Not having read those books, I'm in no position to say what Ben Macintyre's adds that is new..." More

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01/01/2016:

Photos:

Grimness

Paddling in Wharfedale

---

30/12/2015:

Photos:

Yorkshire

---

08/12/2015:

• A review of England, England by Julian Barnes

  "Julian Barnes' writing can tread a fine line between cleverness and preciousness. Normally his novels incorporate enough of the stuff of ordinary human experience to sustain the reader through the odd stretch of pompous intellectual waffle..." More

• Photos.

Yorkshire

---

25/11/2015:

Photos:

Yorkshire

---

08/11/2015:

A review of Er ist Wieder Da by Timur Vermes

"Adolf Hitler comes back to life in 21st-century Berlin and, after a brief period of confusion and adjustment, resumes the plans for world domination that he was forced to put on hold in 1945. Mistaken for an ultra-serious method actor, he is courted by a television production company, which lands him a regular slot on a show hosted by a Turkish comedian..." More

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25/10/2015:

Photos:

Autumn scenes on the River Cam

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11/10/2015:

• A review of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

  "(This review contains spoilers, should you care.) The mystically inclined Hermann Hesse was drawn to eastern philosophy, and Siddhartha is - at first sight, at least - his fictional exposition of some of the main ideas behind Hinduism and Buddhism. The novel describes the life of Siddhartha, a Brahmin's son who feels something is missing in the routines and rituals of his privileged family life, and who goes off in search of his inner self..." More

• Photos.

Ely and around

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22/09/2015:

A review of Brief an den Vater by Franz Kafka

"In his will, Franz Kafka stipulated that all his unpublished manuscripts should be destroyed. It's a dizzying thought that should his executor, Max Brod, have followed his friend's instructions, one of the most influential writers of all time would barely have been a footnote in literary history..." More

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14/09/2015:

• A review of The Road to Lichfield by Penelope Lively

  "Anne, a woman in early middle age, with two children and a stable but dull marriage, enters into an affair with a man she meets while visiting her father in a care home in Staffordshire. Dutiful visits to the Midlands offer her a convenient excuse to absent herself from her Berkshire home to meet her new lover, a thoughtful headmaster..." More

• Photos.

River life

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01/09/2015:

• A review of Life, Love and the Archers by Wendy Cope

  "Part of me objects to collections of previously published articles by well-known writers: my inner cynic says they they've already been paid for their work, so why should they get paid again, and particularly why should these cobbled-together books gain immediate access to the promotional stands at Waterstone's, when so many struggling new writers labour away for years without even finding a publisher? As the flash young journalist Jasper Milvain declares in New Grub Street, "To those who have shall be given." In Wendy Cope's case, some padding was needed to complement the reprintings of her poetry and television reviews, and she didn't need to find the material herself; having sold all her manuscripts to the British Library to raise money to buy a house, she got a call from her editor, who said there was enough workable material in Cope's unpublished memoirs to bring the page count of Life, Love and the Archers up to a saleable level. "I am a lucky woman," writes Cope at one point; she's referring to her love life, but most writers would envy her her professional fortune, too..." More

• Photos.

Paddlers who are better than me

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22/08/2015:

• A review of Keeping an Eye Open by Julian Barnes

  "In his free-form early novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, Julian Barnes included a philosophical-aesthetic appreciation of Géricault's "Raft of the Medusa". "Catastrophe into Art" was his first foray into art criticism; it was a wry but informative analysis of the painter's compromises with the historical truth of the depicted scene, a group of desperate sailors on a raft from a shipwreck, hailing the tiny speck of a ship on the horizon: Q::These are men who have drunk their own urine, gnawed the leather from their hats, consumed their own comrades..." More

• Photos.

Yorkshire

---

17/08/2015:

• A review of Skating to Antarctica by Jenny Diski

  "Novelist Jenny Diski agrees with her publisher to take a trip to the Antarctic, and to use the experience as the framework for her first non-fiction work. After failing to persuade the British Antarctic Survey to let her tag along on one of its voyages, she falls back on a two-week tourist cruise from Tierra del Fuego, via South Georgia, to the edge of the southern ice cap..." More

• Photos.

Paddling

---

26/07/2015:

• A review of The Strength of Poetry by James Fenton

  "This book contains a series of lectures that James Fenton delivered during his time as Oxford Professor of Poetry. Most of it consists of analyses of the work of individual poets: Wilfred Owen, Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, D H Lawrence and W H Auden..." More

• Photos.

Yorkshire

---

12/07/2015:

Photos:

Upper reaches of the River Cam

Lackford, Suffolk

Nene Whitewater Centre

---

02/07/2015:

Photos:

Cat

Five Rise Locks, Bingley

Upware, Cambs.

---

07/06/2015:

A review of Jane Austen's Persuasion .

"Anne Elliot, daughter of a snobbish Somerset baronet, falls in love with the naval officer Captain Wentworth. Wentworth proposes, but the disapproval of her father and of an old friend, Mrs..." More

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31/05/2015:

Photos from late April and May:

Grantchester	Sutton Gault	Lee Valley Whitewater Centre	Cambridge
Yorkshire

---

19/04/2015:

A review of A Cursing Brain? by Howard Kushner

"Tourette's Syndrome is an odd and fascinating psychiatric condition. It is a torment for its sufferers, who are subject to involuntary tics that range from blinking and grunting, through jerking of the limbs, to the compulsion to utter swear words, insult interlocutors in the most hurtful terms, and behave in the most inappropriate manner for any given social situation..." More

---

07/04/2015:

• A review of Making an Elephant by Graham Swift

  "A collection of non-fiction from a successful but self-effacing novelist. Among his generation of British writers, Swift has the most elusive personality; he lacks Salman Rushdie's exuberance, Martin Amis's brilliant way with words, or Julian Barnes' commanding gravitas..." More

• Photos.

Yorkshire

---

31/03/2015:

Photos:

Bodies floating down the River Dee

---

04/03/2015:

A review of Infinite Minds by John Leslie

"Everything that exists, exists as a thought in a divine mind. There may be more than one divine mind..." More

---

25/02/2015:

Photos:

Lee Valley kayaking on the Legacy Loop

River Tees

Yorkshire

---

09/02/2015:

I've translated a German poem - just for laughs, you understand.

---

02/02/2015:

Photos:

Yorkshire

---

25/01/2015:

• A review of Beast and Man by Mary Midgley

  "Mary Midgley argues that human culture and morality should properly be regarded, not as freak developments in the history of life, but as extensions of "animal nature". More particularly, as a moral philosopher and a socialist, she feels we should pay more attention to altruistic behaviour in animals, and question Tennyson's conception of nature as ineluctably "red in tooth and claw"..." More

• Photos.

Paddling the Cam

---

07/01/2015:

Photos:

Saltaire	The Chevin	Cat	The Aire Valley
Baildon Moor

---

20/12/2014:

A review of In Trouble Again by Redmond O'Hanlon

"After a journey into the heart of Borneo, out of which came a successful book, Redmond O'Hanlon cast around for a companion on a more ambitious expedition to the rainforest of Venezuela. O'Hanlon's aim was to locate and spend time with a feared indigenous people, the Yanomami, whose men are noted for their hobbies of fighting each other with huge sticks, and massacring the inhabitants of neighbouring villages..." More

---

06/12/2014:

Photos:

A bracing winter paddle round the Backs

---

01/12/2014:

Photos:

Scraping rocks in South Wales

---

23/11/2014:

Photos:

Lode	More sluice action

---

15/11/2014:

Photos:

Cambridge Science Park

Icklingham Plains, Suffolk

---

08/11/2014:

Photos:

Another view from a kayak

Ilkley Moor

---

27/10/2014:

A review of The Fetish Room by Rudi Rotthier. It's about Redmond O'Hanlon

"Flemish journalist Rudi Rotthier spends 10 days touring southern England in the company of eccentric adventurer Redmond O'Hanlon. O'Hanlon leads Rotthier to the places where he grew up, including his father's old parishes (the latter was a Church of England vicar), and the schools he attended, including Marlborough..." More

.

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14/10/2014:

• Cars I Have Known
• Photos.

Yorkshire

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04/10/2014:

A review of Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks

"Sacks takes a broad-ranging view of the phenomena of hallucination that can affect all our senses, but most prominently the visual and the auditory. He starts off with descriptions of sufferers of Charles Bonnet Syndrome, who develop hallucinations in apparent response to the loss of sight or hearing..." More

.

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21/09/2014:

Photos:

Sluicing it

Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation, Essex

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14/09/2014:

Photos:

Grantchester

Isleham Marina

Low-key whitewater paddling in Bedfordshire

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31/08/2014:

Reviews of some Conrad short stories:

• An Outpost of Progress

"Two middle-aged Belgians, an ex-soldier and an ex-civil servant, are left in charge of a trading post on the west African coast for six months. In their dealings with local tribes, they are dependent on their taciturn and inscrutable Negro assistant Makola..." More

• Il Conde

"The narrator makes the acquaintance an old Eastern European aristocrat in a hotel in Naples, takes a ten-day break, then returns to find the old man shaken by a recent encounter with a thief in a dark alley. The thief turns out to be a member of a deadly gang, and when he discovers that the Count did not hand over all his money, lets it be known that there will be "consequences"..." More

• The Duel

"An excellent novella recounting a long-running feud between two officers in Napoleon's army, the hot-headed southerner Feraud and the phlegmatic northerner D'Hubert. After wounding a civilian in a fit of temper, Feraud is apprehended at a party by D'Hubert on the orders of the general..." More

• The Idiots

"A peasant Breton couple have four idiot children. The father loses the plot and becomes violent towards his wife, whom in his malicious simplicity he blames for his misfortune..." More

• The Informer

"A group of anarchists printing seditious material in a house in London discover that they have an informer in their midst. Various characters are not what they seem, and there is much subtle manipulation going on..." More

• The Lagoon

"A very short story about violence and romantic love in an Indonesian tribe. Can't remember much about it..." More

• The Secret Sharer

"Though short, this is a very clever and intricate story. The narrator relates his experience as a young sailor taking on his first captaincy in the East Indes, at short notice and working with a crew with which he is unacquainted..." More

• Youth: A Narrative

"A simple but well-written short story in which Conrad's favourite nautical raconteur Marlow describes his first voyage to the East Indies, as a ship's second mate. The ship's departure is delayed repeatedly, for a total of several weeks; just before it leaves England, the rats desert it..." More

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27/08/2014:

Photos:

River Cam again

Yorkshire

---

21/08/2014:

Photos:

River Cam sluice

---

16/08/2014:

Photos:

North Yorkshire

South Yorkshire

Lincolnshire

---

04/08/2014:

Photos:

The Cambridge Backs

---

31/07/2014:

Photos:

Bird life on the Cam

The lovely Norfolk coast

---

21/07/2014:

Photos:

Whitewater paddling, Wales

---

15/07/2014:

Photos:

Adventurers' Fen

Northamptonshire

Geese

---

01/07/2014:

Photos:

East Riddlesden Hall, Yorks.

---

23/06/2014:

Photos:

Along the River Cam

South Cambridgeshire

---

01/06/2014:

Photos:

South Cambridgeshire

---

25/05/2014:

• A review of The Nigger of the "Narcissus" by Joseph Conrad

  "Joseph Conrad was that rare type, a man of action with the sensibility of a poet. The Nigger of the "Narcsissus" was the first fictional work based on his experience in the Merchant Navy, and it is a remarkable piece of writing: a gripping adventure story that is also a profound meditation on the human condition..." More

• Photos.

The River Cam

---

24/05/2014:

Stuff about Mozart's Clarinet Quintet.

---

23/05/2014:

Photos:

More photos of Upware

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18/05/2014:

Photos:

Upware, Cambs.

---

17/05/2014:

Photos:

River life

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10/05/2014:

• Reviews added of books I couldn't finish .
• I finally dragged the site into the 21st Century and added submenus to the main menu items.

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01/05/2014:

• A review of The Bostonians by Henry James

  "It's a long time since I read this, and I'm not sure how I'd rate it if I read it today. It's a book I found more impressive than compelling - but certainly, unlike The Portrait of a Lady, it has a lot to say, and for the most part it says it well..." More

• Photos.

The River Cam (again)

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26/04/2014:

• A review of Dr. Johnson's Selected Essays

"Who would you guess is the second most quoted writer in the English language, after Shakespeare? Dickens? Wordsworth? Hardy? No, it's Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language, and one of the all-time greats of British letters, though today mostly only read by the cognoscenti. Aside from his monumental Dictionary, Johnson's contribution to the literary canon was small..." More

• Photos.

Anston Stones Wood, South Yorkshire

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19/03/2014:

More musical night thoughts, this time on Mahler and Debussy.

---

18/03/2014:

Photos:

Grafton Underwood, Northants.

---

05/03/2014:

Thoughts on Beethoven and Mahler.

---

01/03/2014:

Photos:

The River Cam

Norwich

---

12/02/2014:

Photos:

Paddling on the River Tees

Saltaire, West Yorks.

Yorkshire Dales

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26/01/2014:

• A review of What W H Auden Can Do for You by Alexander McCall Smith

  "Alexander McCall Smith is a writer of (I gather) undemanding detective stories, so it is with some surprise that one learns of his passion for W H Auden - one of the most erudite, subtle, and sometimes obscure, poets of the 20th Century. This is a slim volume in a "writers on writers" series by the Princeton University Press; in it, McCall Smith recounts his relationship with Auden's work, engages in some free-form literary criticism, and relates the inspiration he drew from Auden to his own life..." More

• Photos.

The River Cam

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24/01/2014:

A review of Philip Larkin, the Marvell Press and Me by Jean Hartley.

"George and Jean Hartley, a young married couple from Hull, founded the poetry magazine Listen in the early 1950s. After three well-received issues, they decided to publish a book, and approached a talented Listen contributor for a poetry collection..." More

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13/01/2014:

A review of Stoner by John Williams.

"This is the life story of William Stoner, a quiet English lecturer in a university in the American Mid-west. After growing up as an only child to poor farming parents, Stoner goes to university, develops a passion for literature, gets an academic post, and proceeds to lead an unassuming, rather sad life..." More

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06/01/2014:

Photos:

Ribblesdale

Gordale

Ilkley Moor

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27/12/2013:

A review of Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood.

"Despite its fame, this is rather a cheeky book, consisting of mere fragments of a novel that Isherwood never finished. As a tableau of life in late Weimar Germany, it was guaranteed a wide readership when it was published in 1939..." More

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05/12/2013:

Photos of autumn trees, etc.:

Cambridge Science Park (I)

Clayhithe, Cambs.

Cambridge Science Park (II)

Achurch, Northants.

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29/11/2013:

A review of The Longest Journey by E M Forster

"This early novel by Forster is his most overlooked, but it is surprisingly interesting - more so than A Room with a View, which, finding it insipid and contrived, I gave up on after 30 pages. At the same time, I found The Longest Journey quite disturbing on some levels..." More

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17/11/2013:

Photos:

Lode, Cambridgeshire

River Crouch, Essex

---

10/11/2013:

Photos:

Northamptonshire

London

---

13/10/2013:

• A review of The Practice of Writing by David Lodge

  "As a fan of David Lodge's novels, I thought I'd check out his criticism. The Practice of Writing is a compilation of literary reviews, texts of lectures, and reports on his personal experiences of writing for television and the theatre..." More

• Photos.

Little Gidding

Fotheringhay

---

30/09/2013:

Photos:

Northamptonshire

Wales

---

27/09/2013:

• A review of Paradise News by David Lodge

  "Part-time theology lecturer Bernard Walsh learns that his aunt in Hawaii is dying, and at her request drags his elderly father to the other side of the world for a final reunion. Once in Hawaii, things are thrown out of kilter by his father's admission to hospital after a traffic accident..." More

• Photos.

Trees

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21/09/2013:

• A review of The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

  "Joseph Roth's longest and most ambitious novel follows the life of Carl Joseph von Trotta, a lieutenant in the Austrian army, as he moves from post to post in Eastern Europe in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Trotta is the grandson of the "Hero of Solferino", an infantryman who saved the life of the Emperor in battle..." More

• Photos.

Ely	A paddle in Thetford Forest

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08/09/2013:

A review of Deaf Sentence by David Lodge

"David Lodge started losing his hearing in his mid-40s, and by the start of his 70s, his affliction was beginning to detract significantly from his quality of life. Ever a resourceful writer, Lodge drew on his experience for this novel, which describes the daily ordeals of Desmond Bates, a retired Professor of Linguistics whose progressive loss of high-frequency hearing makes communication, and therefore living, increasingly difficult for both himself and those around him..." More

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01/09/2013:

Photos:

Stamford

Giggleswick

Exotic fauna in West Yorkshire

Pen-y-ghent

---

27/08/2013:

Photos:

River Cam

Titchmarsh Nature Reserve, Northants.

South Pickenham, Norfolk

Cambridge

---

11/08/2013:

Photos:

River Cam

---

04/08/2013:

Photos:

South Yorkshire	West Yorkshire	North Yorkshire	Salthouse, Norfolk
River Cam

---

27/07/2013:

Updates to the Classical Reviews page:

• Mahler's Resurrection Syphony added.
• Notes on recordings of Mahler's 4th Symphony updated.
• Notes on recordings of Schubert's Piano Sonata D. 959 updated.

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17/07/2013:

Photos:

East Cambridgeshire

Milton

Wales

---

07/07/2013:

Photos of Norfolk:

Houghton Hall

Brancaster

---

02/07/2013:

Photos:

Northamptonshire

---

28/06/2013:

Photos:

Adventurers' Fen

Soham

---

17/06/2013:

Photos:

Wadenhoe

---

09/06/2013:

A review of The Wild Rover by Mike Parker

"Hard on the heels of his quirky bestseller Map Addict came this, Mike Parker's homage to the British footpath network. Aimed squarely at the same readership as the earlier book - most map lovers are walkers, and vice versa - The Wild Rover is an informative and witty volume, though it is somewhat disjointed, and its tone is occasionally soured by snide comments about those whom Parker regards as stuffy or boring..." More

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04/06/2013:

Photos:

Snailwell, Cambs.

Yorkshire

---

07/05/2013:

Photos:

Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire

Adventurers' Fen

Fordham Woods

Paddling in the Wye Valley

---

20/04/2013:

Book reviews:

• Yehudi Menuhin: Unfinished Journey

"The great violinist's autobiography is thorough and thoughtful, if somewhat lacking in flair. Menuhin recounts his career, as a musician, mentor and teacher, in plenty of detail; but don't come to this book expecting incisive self-revelation..." More

• Julian Barnes : Levels of Life

"This book is in three very different parts: the first describes early balloon flights by three nineteenth-century Europeans; the second part an affair between two of the latter, the famous French actress Sarah Bernhardt and the maverick balloonist Frederick Burnaby; the third part is a meditation on the author's grief at the death of his wife. Barnes tries to stretch themes across all the three parts - flight, height, wind-powered versus machine-powered aviation, photography - and to imply a hidden intricacy to the work that belies its somewhat dislocated aspect..." More

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14/04/2013:

Review of books read a long time ago:

• Hermann Hesse: Der Steppenwolf

"(Qualifier: ages since I read this.) I read this over twenty years ago, and can't remember much about it. Harry Haller is a disillusioned man living in Berlin who (if I recall correctly) is recently divorced..." More

• Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game

"(Qualifier: ages since I read this.) This is Hesse's longest and most ambitious novel, but I would struggle really to recommend it. It is set in a fictional European country that, if I recall correctly, is built on vaguely feudal lines..." More

• Robert Musil: The Confusions of Young Törless

"(Qualifier: ages since I read this.) I can't remember much about this novel, and I recall I found it difficult to read at the time. Musil is an erudite writer whose long sentences and large vocabulary make reading him in the original German quite a challenge..." More

• Benjamin Constant: Adolphe

"(Qualifier: ages since I read this.) An early exemplar of the French psychological novel. Adolphe is a young man who engages in an affair with an older woman..." More

• Madame de la Fayette: La Princesse de Clèves

"(Qualifier: ages since I read this.) An extremely early psychological novel. I can't remember much about it, but it centres on a young princess who falls in love with somebody or other, and emotional intrigues throughout the court..." More

• Peter Handke: The Left-handed Woman

"(Qualifier: ages since I read this.) A woman leaves her inadequate and sometimes abusive husband. Though she feels sorry for his distress at the break-up of their marriage, she is happier living alone, something that none of her friends can understand..." More

• Peter Handke: Short Letter, Long Farewell

"(Qualifier: ages since I read this.) I can't even remember if I finished this novel. I think I did..." More

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13/04/2013:

A review of Flight Without End by Joseph Roth

"Franz Tunda is an officer in the Austrian army, who gets captured by Russians in the First World War, escapes, spends a couple of years living with a Polish fur trader in Siberia, then slowly makes his way across Asia and Europe to Paris. His self-instigated mission is to find his old fiancée; though he knows she is married to another man, she represents a vague ideal to him that he acknowledges, on one level, to be arbitrary and delusional..." More

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30/03/2013:

• A review of The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes

  "An assured collection of short stories that all deal, directly or obliquely, with old age and its attendant themes: regret, disappointment, physical and mental decline, loneliness. In terms of craftsmanship and insight, this book is definite four-star material; but in terms of enjoyability it has to be marked down to three..." More

• Photos.

Ribblesdale

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23/03/2013:

Thoughts on bad descriptive passages in novels.

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20/03/2013:

• A review of Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

  "George and Lennie are itinerant workers moving among the ranches of northern and central California. George is small, quick-witted and articulate, Lennie stupid, gentle and strong..." More

• Photos.

Adventurers' Fen

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09/03/2013:

A review of Job by Joseph Roth

"Roth tells the story of Mendel Singer, a poor, pious Russian Jew who makes a meagre living teaching the Bible to children. His life is hard and joyless, his marriage without passion, and his children a cause of endless worry: his eldest son turns his back on Judaism and joins the army; the second son leaves the country to avoid conscription, and is not heard from for years; his daughter sleeps with Cossacks from the nearby barracks; and his youngest son is a retarded cripple..." More

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24/02/2013:

A review of Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane

""A story of adultery no different from a hundred others" is how Theodor Fontane described this, one of his best-known novels. His modest assessment of the work may be disarming: but it does, indeed, lack the sweep and penetration of the best realist literature..." More

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23/02/2013:

• Short reviews of more books I read as a student, aeons ago:
  • Les Mots by Jean-Paul Sartre

    "(Qualifier: Ages since I read this.) Sartre's autobiography. It's very short, and rather than being a chronological narrative of the events of his early life, is an account of his relationship with literature and language - how, in short, he became a writer..." More

  • A volume of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography

  "(Qualifier: Ages since I read this.) Another book I read as a student, this is the first volume of de Beauvoir's autobiography. It is a readable, straightforward and honest-seeming book that evokes fairly vividly the writer's early life and education, and includes an account of her early relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre..." More

  • Les belles Images by Simone de Beauvoir

    "(Qualifier: Ages since I read this.) A book about a woman working in an advertising agency in the 1960s, who comes to question her choice of career and why she lacks the enthusiasm for superficial things that she finds in her colleagues. I can't remember much about this novel, but it offered a fairly interesting insight into the advertising world in the 1960s, as well as being a semi-philosophical critique of the rising consumerist culture in general..." More

• Photos.

Yorkshire and Cumbria

A paddle along the Cambridgeshire lodes

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13/02/2013:

A review of Joseph Roth 's short story April

"An unnamed narrator describes the few weeks he spent in a small town in late spring, where he observed the locals, engaged in a relationship with a young waitress, and finally "fell in love" with the postmaster's daughter, who would stand at her bedroom window every day and whom the narrator never spoke to, other than to say hello. Subtitled "The History of a Love", this strange short story has no obvious analytical message..." More

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03/02/2013:

Photos:

A chilly paddle in south Cambridgeshire

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29/01/2013:

• Reviews of some books I read decades ago:
  • Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

    "(Qualifier: Ages since I read this.) A French historian, Roqentin, hangs out in a fictionalised Le Havre, visits the library, bars and a prostitute, and observes wryly the behaviour of his fellow human beings. He becomes paradoxically fascinated by his own boredom, and by the pointlessness and hypocrisy of all human doings..." More

  • America by Franz Kafka

    "(Qualifier: Ages since I read this.) Young Karl Rossman emigrates to America and wanders around searching for somewhere to call "home". It's far too long since I read this novel for me to remember very much about it at all, except that it wasn't as compelling as Der Process..." More

  • The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

    "(Qualifier: Ages since I read this.) Possibly Kafka's most coherent proper "story". Though short, it is, I believe, the longest piece he finished..." More

• And one of The Legend of the Holy Drinker by Joseph Roth

  "Alcoholic tramp Andreas Kartak, a Polish émigré living in Paris, receives a mysterious gift of 200 francs from a well-to-do stranger. Initially intent on using the money to get back on his feet, he promises the stranger that he will repay it..." More

• Photos.

Winter scenes in Cambridgeshire

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06/01/2013:

Photos:

Bits of the Yorkshire Dales on New Year's Day

Liverpool

Leeds

---

01/01/2013:

Photos:

Brampton, Cambridgeshire	Scosthrop Moor, Yorkshire	Pen-y-ghent, Yorkshire	Gordale, Yorkshire
South Yorkshire	Wet moors	Clapham

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25/12/2012:

• A review of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

  "Narrator Tony Webster splits up with his manipulative girlfriend Veronica while a student; shortly afterwards, she starts going out with a friend of his, the intensely serious and intimidatingly intelligent Adrian. Tony goes on to lead an averagely disappointing but quiet life; things go, to put it mildly, less smoothly for Adrian and Veronica..." More

• Photos.

Frosty fields in Cambridgeshire	Cambridge	Ely	Lackford Lakes
Bury St. Edmunds

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04/12/2012:

Photos:

Withersfield, Suffolk

Sutton Gault

---

18/11/2012:

Photos:

Teesdale

Shipley Glen

A kayaking trip on the River Great Ouse

---

06/11/2012:

Some poems, written or completed relatively recently:

• The Venetians: rapacious bandits or curators of civilised values? You decide.
• Music: why it makes sense of life.
• Yosemite Valley: does what it says on the tin.
• Little Gidding: a homage to T S Eliot, or something.

Photos:

Cambridge again

Anglesey Abbey

---

14/10/2012:

• Thoughts on Schubert's Death and the Maiden Quartet.
• Photos.

Cambridge, early evening

---

13/10/2012:

A couple of new things:

• Notes on Big Country's Celt-rock classic The Crossing added to the "Pop CDs" page.
• A new page added containing notes on some poets.

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11/10/2012:

Small changes to the site:

• Boxes have rounded corners, at least they do if you are using Firefox.
• The main Poetry page now includes a random poem.

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09/10/2012:

A review of Walking Home by Simon Armitage

"In 2010, poet Simon Armitage walked the Pennine Way, the most famous long-distance footpath in England. The Pennines are a range of hills running for 250 miles down the middle of the north of the country, and are characterised by alternations of bleak, rain-soaked moorland and beautiful, tranquil valleys..." More

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17/09/2012:

Photos:

North Yorkshire

Kirkby Lonsdale

Dent

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13/09/2012:

Photos:

Beechwoods Nature Reserve	Ely	Wicken Fen	A paddle up the upper reaches of the Cam
Massive clouds in Cambridgeshire	Rutland Water	Cambridge	Devil's Dyke
A paddler's-eye view of Cambridge	Rutland Water	Grantham	Knaresborough

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12/08/2012:

This month's photos so far:

Coveney, Cambs.

Wellingborough, Northants.

North Norfolk

---

31/07/2012:

Photos:

Little Gidding	Hemington, Northants.	Oundle, Northants.	Lowick, Northants.
Wind turbines near the M1/A14 interchange	Cambridge

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27/07/2012:

Photos:

Yorkshire	Central Cambridgeshire	Pidley Church	Stamford
Lowick,	Modified pictures of Yosemite Valley

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05/07/2012:

• A review of The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst

"On July 10th, 1969, an unmanned, battered trimaran was found bobbling peacefully in the middle of the North Atlantic by the crew of a Royal Mail ship. It turned out to be boat of Donald Crowhurst, the only remaining competitor in a Sunday Times non-stop round-the-world yacht race that had begun the previous year..." More

• Photos.

Burwell Fen

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29/06/2012:

Photos:

Adventurers' Fen

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25/06/2012:

• A review of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

  "(Warning: contains slight spoilers.) This is one of those awkward books that falls between a three-star and a four-star valuation. It combines great literary qualities with elements of melodama and cheap adventure fiction..." More

• Photos.

West Row

Cambridge

Wicken Fen

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20/06/2012:

flight to California

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18/06/2012:

Photos:

Yorkshire

---

06/06/2012:

Photos of California:

Yosemite Valley	San Francisco in the evening	Las Trampas Regional Wilderness	Other places
The Big Sur coast, Monterey and Carmel	San Francisco in the afternoon	Bits of Britain from the air

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18/05/2012:

Photos:

Haddenham, Cambridgeshire

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09/05/2012:

• A review of La Symphonie Pastorale by André Gide

  "A French country pastor keeps a diary in which he traces his relationship with a blind teenage girl he takes into his family's care, after the death of the deaf aunt with whom she lived. He teaches her to speak and devotes much time and attention to her education, to the extent that his wife's jealousy is aroused..." More

• A review of The Hound of the Baskervilles

"Sir Charles Baskerville dies of a heart attack after being chased by a huge ghostly dog near his Dartmoor home. His friend Dr..." More

• Photos.

Yorkshire

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05/05/2012:

Photos:

Bridgenorth, Shropshire

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16/04/2012:

A review of An Introduction to English Poetry by James Fenton

"A bit of a misleading title: this isn't a guide to poetry as such, but an overview of poetic form in the English language, by a highly-regarded poet (if not a very prolific one). As such, it's rather good: it goes through the most common metres and a few standard poetic structures - the stuff most of us were never taught properly at school..." More

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25/03/2012:

• A write-up of Nick Lowe's The Impossible Bird added to the "Pop CDs" page.
• Photos.

a flat area

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10/03/2012:

Updates to the Pop CD catalogue.

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05/03/2012:

• A review of The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake

  "This book is long overdue: a high-level critique of scientific dogmatism by a scientist of impeccable credentials. (Rupert Sheldrake has been a Research Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.) Sheldrake's method in this book is simple, but highly effective: to take what he calls "the ten dogmas of modern science", and turn them into questions: to ask whether, on the basis of scientific evidence, we are right to take them as assumptions..." More

• Photos.

Ironbridge

Ely

Yorkshire

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18/02/2012:

Photos:

Sawston, Cambs.

Yorkshire

---

02/02/2012:

• A review of How Far Can You Go? by David Lodge

  "Lodge traces the lives of a group of Catholic students who meet at London University in the 1950s, and observes how the growth of the permissive society over the subsequent couple of decades affects their relationships and their faith. As the Catholic Church struggles painfully to modernise itself, the young people find themselves, to varying degrees, simultaneously liberated and disoriented..." More

• Photos.

Shropshire

Burwell Fen

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29/12/2011:

Photos:

Wansford, Cambridgeshire

Ribble Valley, Yorkshire

Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria

---

06/12/2011:

Photos:

Great Ouse

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25/11/2011:

• A review of Meine Weltansicht by Erwin Schrödinger

  "As a young man, Erwin Schrödinger planned to divide his academic career between theoretical physics and philosophy. Circumstances forced him to drop his ambitions in the latter, with the result that his philosophical output is confined to two essays written in his leisure time..." More

• Photos.

Gog Magog Hills

North

West Yorkshire

---

12/11/2011:

Some philosophical ideas that I have been mulling over for a while.

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02/11/2011:

Cambridge

---

25/10/2011:

• A review of The Philip Larkin I Knew by Maeve Brennan.

  "Maeve Brennan was sub-librarian at Hull University, and Philip Larkin's "unofficial" lover for most of the time that he worked there. Their relationship, though founded on deep mutual affection, was complicated by three factors: Larkin's ambivalent attachment to another woman, Monica Jones; Brennan's Catholicism, which precluded committed sexual relations outside marriage; and Larkin's belief that his creative talent was dependent on the emotional freedom of bachelorhood..." More

• Photos.

Lancashire

Yorkshire

Ely

a paddle on the River Lark

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03/10/2011:

More photos:

Linton, Cambridgeshire

Clare, Suffolk

---

28/09/2011:

Photos from lunchtime flights from the office:

Magog Down, Cambridgeshire

Saffron Walden, Essex

Littlebury, Essex

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25/09/2011:

A review of a book about Wolfgang Pauli , the physicist.

"Wolfgang Pauli was one of the greats of twentieth-century physics, the original postulator of both particle spin and the neutrino (a chargeless particle produced by atomic decay). He was also a somewhat controversial figure, humorously blunt in his criticisms of colleagues, and in the latter half of his career entertaining ideas about the relationship between physics and psychology that more conventional scientists have found hard to take seriously..." More

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11/09/2011:

Updates to the Pop CD catalogue.

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28/08/2011:

• A review of Collapse
• Photos.

Anglesey Abbey

Germany and Luxembourg

---

07/08/2011:

A review of The Body Electric

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03/08/2011:

Given the impending collapse of industrial civilisation, I can't be bothered to submit poems for publication. Here are a few that I wrote several years ago that never saw the light of day - until now, you lucky surfer:

• A Baby: about whether everything is downhill from the moment we're born
• Californian Scenes: about my first trip to California. Written before I found out about Peak Oil, hence imbued with misplaced optimism
• Cast your mind into Precambrian seas: about whether evolution was a waste of time
• The Picture Above Ground: about the deceptive peacefulness of churchyards
• The Stream: about musing pointlessly on the essence of the self

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01/08/2011:

Photos:

Cambridge

Great Henny, Essex

---

24/07/2011:

Photos:

Oxford

---

10/07/2011:

the Cam

Boxted, Suffolk

---

02/07/2011:

Recent photos:

Ely Cathedral from Stuntney	Ashen, Suffolk	Snettisham, Norfolk	Sudbury, Suffolk
Grantchester and Cambridge

---

13/06/2011:

Cambridge and Grantchester

---

04/06/2011:

a paddle up the Cam

---

02/06/2011:

poppies near the office

Sussex

---

31/05/2011:

Yorkshire

---

28/05/2011:

Chichester

---

05/05/2011:

sheep and Anglo-German entente

---

29/04/2011:

Reviews of three stories by Tolstoy :

• Happy Ever After

"Following the death of her father, Masha, an innocent young woman from the Russian countryside, marries her guardian, a man twice her age, and for a while the pair are blissfully happy. However, once introduced to the society life of Petersburg, Masha realises what she has been missing out on, and starts to relish the attention she receives from the cosmopolitan townsfolk, particularly its men..." More

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich

"Tolstoy succinctly traces the life and career of Ivan Ilyich Golovin, a conventional but successful lawyer, then describes his slow and painful death and his reflections during it. As much as by physical suffering, Golovin is pained by doubts about the worth of the life he lived: he has been superficially honourable and superficially satisfied with his lot, but emotionally and spiritually his existence has been frigid and lonely..." More

• The Cossacks

"A wonderful novella that describes the experiences of Dmitrii Olenin, a young Russian nobleman who heads off to join the army in the Caucasus, hoping to find there, in some form, opportunities for an authentic life that he feels denied in the cushy and stifling atmosphere of Moscow. Once stationed in a Cossack village in the plains below the mountains, he finds his minimal military duties give him plenty of time to study local customs, and rather than spend his days with his fellow soldiers, he takes to a life of semi-integration into Cossack life, drinking and shooting with some of the villagers, and ultimately falling in love with his landlord's daughter..." More

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11/04/2011:

Long Preston

---

21/03/2011:

• Updates to the Pop CD catalogue, though the page is so long now you'll have a hard time spotting 'em.
• Photos.

More pylons

---

12/03/2011:

• A review of Whoops! by John Lanchester.

  "Most of us have little understanding of precisely what caused the 2008 credit crunch, beyond that it had a lot to do with greed and something called toxic loans. John Lanchester was in a similar position when he stumbled upon the subject of high finance during research for a novel; so fascinating did he find the matter that he decided to devote a non-fiction book to it instead..." More

• Book reviews now have clickable star ratings.
• Photos.

Pampisford

pylons

---

05/03/2011:

• A review of Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

  "This was George Eliot's notoriously flawed final novel. It tells two stories: the one of Gwendolen Harleth, a spoilt, beautiful girl who marries a charismatic and attractive, but emotionally sadistic man, Henleigh Grandcourt; the other of Daniel Deronda, a noble young man brought up as a "nephew" by the affable but conventional Sir Hugo Mallinger, who develops an interest in Jewish culture before discovering its relevance to his true lineage..." More

  .
• A review of Le Rêve de D'Alembert by Denis Diderot.

  "A set of three philosophical dialogues conducted by imaginary representations of people Diderot knew: D'Alembert, who had worked with Diderot on the Encyclopédie; Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, a well-known salon dame; and the knowledgable Doctor Bordeu. The discussions focus on the workings of the mind and the nervous system, the relationship of mind to body, and the questions of morality and free will..." More

• A blog entry on the types of people who believe, and disbelieve, conspiracy theories.
• Photos.

Cambridge

---

12/02/2011:

• A review of Small World by David Lodge

  "Innocent young English lecturer Persse McGarrigle, from Limerick University in Ireland, meets the girl of his dreams at a conference, loses track of her whereabouts, and travels the world in search of her. Meanwhile, elder academics Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp jump from conference to conference in search of intellectual stimulation, career progression, parties and sexual good times..." More

• Photos.

Long Preston

---

23/01/2011:

London

---

16/01/2011:

A review of Nothing Natural by Jenny Diski.

"Self-sufficient single mum Rachel gets involved in a sado-masochistic relationship with a charismatic older man, Joshua - a relationship that brings to the surface old insecurities that she thought she had got over long ago. Initially accepting the relationship as a bit of noncomittal, intense fun, she comes to want more from it - yet also develops suspicions about Joshua's dark side that trouble her..." More

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10/01/2011:

A review of The Age of Absurdity by Michael Foley.

"Grumpy old academic Michael Foley has his shot at the "modern life is rubbish" genre (you'll notice I've been reading a lot of this genre lately). Subtitled "Why Modern Life Makes It Hard to Be Happy", his book attacks the shallowness, narcissism and boredom encouraged by the modern social environment..." More

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04/01/2011:

Photos:

Ribblesdale.

---

02/01/2011:

knobbly hills.

---

30/12/2010:

• A review of Smile or Die by Barbara Ehrenreich.

  "Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich lays into the "positive thinking" movement that has substantially infiltrated the business, self-help, medical and even academic scenes in the USA. As a cancer patient, she was bombarded with injunctions to see the bright side of her disease, and made to feel guilty about voicing bitterness or fear..." More

• Photos.

Part of Ingleborough

Thurcroft, South Yorks.

Skipton

---

27/12/2010:

• A review of Straw Dogs by John Gray.

  "John Gray constructs a free-form polemic against liberal humanism: the idea that the the story of humanity is - or will be - one of perpetual progess and ever-increasing happiness for ever-increasing numbers of people. As Gray sees it, humanism is effectively an extension of, or a replacement for, Christianity, with its consolations of eternal life and relief from suffering..." More

• Photos.

Christmas Day in Suffolk and Essex

---

21/12/2010:

Photos:

Wandlebury, Cambridgeshire.

---

20/12/2010:

Photos:

Suffolk and Essex in the snish.

---

17/12/2010:

Photos:

Magog Down

---

07/12/2010:

South Cambridgeshire in the frost

---

21/11/2010:

Downham

Clitheroe

---

06/11/2010:

Photos of:

Long Preston

Anglesey Abbey

Beechwoods Nature Reserve

Cherry Hinton

---

26/10/2010:

Photos:

Spider

St. Pancras Station

Reach Wood

Flying to Seattle (from a couple of years back - extra photos added)

Plus:

• Updates to the Pop CD catalogue
• The Sisters of Mercy's Floodland added to the favourite pop CDs page

---

04/10/2010:

Photos of:

Burwell Fen

Long Preston, Yorkshire

Ingleborough and Pen-y-ghent

---

24/09/2010:

Photos of:

Lancaster	Lake District	Wales	Lichfield
Dovedale, Derbyshire	Lancaster	The moon

---

18/09/2010:

• A review of The Shock Doctrine
• Photos.

Chippenham Fen

---

15/09/2010:

More old books finally reviewed:

• John Ardagh: Germany and the Germans

"This is a 1995 edition of a book originally published in 1988. Though now rather out of date, it offers very piquant insights into post-war German life, society and thinking..." More

• John Humphrys: Devil's Advocate

"The presenter of Radio 4's Today show casts his eye on the Britain of the late 1990s and finds it, on balance, a pretty rubbish place. People are greedy, materialistic, shallow and mannerless..." More

• Redmond O'Hanlon: Congo Journey

"Redmond O'Hanlon, accompanied by his friend Lary Shaffer, heads into the Congo jungle in search of some mythical lake monster. As usual, his ostensible mission is really a pretext for throwing himself into extreme situations and, incidentally, studying the local flora and fauna..." More

• Redmond O'Hanlon: Into the Heart of Borneo

"Redmond O'Hanlon and the poet James Fenton head up a mountain in Borneo in the steaming equatorial heat, staying with hedonistic natives and followed everywhere by huge butterflies. It's a long while since I read this book, but what sticks in my mind most about it is that it is one of the funniest I have ever read..." More

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14/09/2010:

Some reviews added of books I read ages ago:

• Richard P Feynman: The Character of Physical Law

"This is one of the books that reignited my interest in science as an adult. It's based on a set of lectures that Feynman delivered at Cornell University, aimed at the general public, and exemplifies his ability to explain difficult concepts both clearly and tersely..." More

• Eric Hobsbawm: The Age of Revolution 1789-1848

"It's a long time since I read this book, so I can only convey my general impression of it, rather than analysis of its details. As usual, Hobsbawm's Marxism skews somewhat his take on events, but his panoramic understanding of the forces of history easily outweighs this limitation..." More

• W G Hoskins: The Making of the English Landscape

"The classic account of how England's landscape acquired its character. The book covers both the urban and the rural landscapes, and is written with passion and an appealingly personal touch..." More

• John Julius Norwich: Byzantium: The Early Centuries

"It's a long time since I read this, but I remember it being an exceptionally readable account of the early history of the eastern Roman Empire. Some critics have called into question its accuracy - John Julius Norwich was a diplomat, not a historian..." More

• Bertrand Russell: History of Western Philosophy

"In my experience, many philosophers take a single interesting idea and make it seem as boring as possible by repeating and refining it to fill out whole books (or their careers). Philosophy therefore lends itself well to summary, and I can't imagine a better summary than this..." More

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11/09/2010:

Photos of:

Cambridge

Surrey

---

08/09/2010:

Old photos from:

Europe Interrail trip, August-September 1988

Helvellyn, Cumbria, October 1988

---

05/09/2010:

A review of Deep Rivers by José María Arguedas added.

"José María Arguedas is held by some critics to be the unsung master of South American literature. Born in Peru of European descent, but brought up among Quechua-speaking Indians, he certainly has a different cultural perspective from most Latin American literati..." More

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04/09/2010:

Yet more old photos:

Christmas in Germany, 1984

One-day trip to the Belgian trenches, February 1985

Bavaria, April 1986

Ely

And some new ones:

Christmas in Germany, 1984

One-day trip to the Belgian trenches, February 1985

Bavaria, April 1986

Ely

---

03/09/2010:

More old photos:

Germany and Luxembourg, May 1984

The Germans visit England, July 1984

North Yorkshire and Wales, August 1984

---

02/09/2010:

More old photos:

Devon, June 1982

Scotland, July 1982

Near Sheffield, August 1982

Wales and Lichfield, August 1983

---

01/09/2010:

More old photos:

Belgium, April 1980

Lake District, August 1986

Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, June 1988 (conservation working holiday)

North York Moors and Yorkshire coast, July 1988

---

31/08/2010:

Some very old photos added:

Lichfield and Snowdonia, June 1987	North York Moors and Ironbridge, October 1987	France, February-May 1988	Lichfield and Barrow-in-Furness, May 1988
Yorkshire Dales, September 1996	Cheshire, August 2003	Wharfedale, August 2003	Wales, August 2003

---

28/08/2010:

Search terms are now highlighted in the full text of Book Reviews .

---

27/08/2010:

Language field added to Book Reviews search.

---

26/08/2010:

Photos:

---

24/08/2010:

Book reviews are now searchable.

---

20/08/2010:

Photo thumbnails added to the home page.

---

15/08/2010:

Yorkshire Dales

---

13/08/2010:

Lancashire

Yorkshire

Cleethorpes

---

04/08/2010:

Flamingo Land, Pickering and Sutton Bank

---

24/07/2010:

Wharfedale

---

28/06/2010:

Photos of:

Gargrave

Rose Castle

---

12/06/2010:

Photos of:

The Wicklow Hills

Gargrave

---

16/05/2010:

Photos of:

Leeds

Around Killarney

Kinsale, Old Head of Kinsale and Garrylucas Beach

---

08/05/2010:

Cork coast

---

25/04/2010:

• A review of QED by Richard P Feynman

  "This book derives from a series of lectures given by Nobel laureate Richard Feynman that introduce the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED). QED is one of the pillars of modern quantum theory, and describes the probablistic interactions of electrons and photons..." More

  .
• Photos.

More photos of the Cork coast.

---

18/04/2010:

a walk in County Kerry

---

11/04/2010:

Photos of:

The south Cork coast

Kenmare and the Kerry mountains

---

05/04/2010:

Yorkshire

Manchester

---

29/03/2010:

Finally, finally, I finish the second novel of Die Schlafwandler by Hermann Broch

"As mentioned in my review of Pasenow oder die Romantik, I am working my way slowly through this large and weighty modernist doorstep, and reviewing each individual novel as I finish it. Esch oder die Anarchie is the second novel of Broch's trilogy..." More

.

---

28/03/2010:

the Sheep's Head Peninsula

---

20/03/2010:

Beara Peninsula

---

17/03/2010:

West Cork coast

---

14/03/2010:

Photos:

Photos from this weekend.

---

28/02/2010:

Cobh

---

27/02/2010:

Tipperary and environs

---

22/02/2010:

Photos of:

Lough Mahon

Clonakilty and Inchydoney Beach

Places north of Cork

---

30/01/2010:

Photos of:

The estuary near Cork

Old Head of Kinsale

Kinsale

---

23/01/2010:

• Dogsticker page updated to reflect my current circumstances.
• Photos.

Cork city

---

17/01/2010:

Sandy Cove

more of Lough Mahon

---

16/01/2010:

Lough Mahon, Cork

---

15/01/2010:

Photos of:

Burwell Fen	Cambridge	Anglesey, Wales	The Irish Sea
Cork and environs

---

04/01/2010:

North Yorkshire

---

01/01/2010:

Photos:

photos (Yorkshire, Lancashire, Liverpool)

---

25/12/2009:

Photos:

whiteish Christmas

---

23/12/2009:

Photos:

snow in Cambridgeshire

---

18/12/2009:

Photos of:

Burwell Fen

Yorkshire in snow

---

12/12/2009:

• A review of Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez

  "A short novel describing the events surrounding the murder of one Santiago Nasar, falsely accused by Angela Vicario of taking her virginity before her marriage to Bayardo San Román. On learning of her impure past, San Román returns her, disgusted, to her family, and her twin brothers vow to avenge the shame brought upon her, by killing Nasar..." More

  .
• Photos.

Oundle

---

07/12/2009:

A review of the first part of Die Schlafwandler by Hermann Broch

"Broch's trilogy of novels Die Schlafwandler is meant to be read as one work; however, it took me long enough to read the first novel, and I'm not sure how soon I'll get around to the others, so I'm reviewing it now while it's still fresh in my mind. The theme of Die Schlafwandler is the decline of values in late 19th-Century and early 20th Century Europe..." More

.

---

25/11/2009:

Cork

---

19/11/2009:

London at night

---

15/11/2009:

Old Man of Coniston from 2003

---

31/10/2009:

• A review of The Grand Chessboard
• Photos.

Yorkshire

Anglesey Abbey

---

26/10/2009:

Ribblesdale

---

26/10/2009:

Malham Tarn

---

22/10/2009:

Photos of:

Lode

Skipton

---

12/10/2009:

• A review of The Art of the Novel by Milan Kundera

  "Milan Kundera muses on the novelist's craft via a series of essays and self-instigated interviews. There is no central thesis; or rather, there are several central theses, which often contradict each other..." More

  .
• Photos.

Reach Wood

---

05/10/2009:

the moon

---

04/10/2009:

A review added of Graham Famelo's biography of Paul Dirac .

"Paul Dirac was one of the central figures in the development of quantum mechanics, yet for most of us his name is less familiar than those of his peers Bohr, Heisenberg and Schroedinger. To account for this is partly the fact that he never lent his name to theorems or concepts that found their way into popular discussion..." More

---

01/10/2009:

Photos:

photos

---

15/09/2009:

A review added of See No Evil

---

12/09/2009:

east Cambridgeshire

Blakeney Point

---

07/09/2009:

Many years ago I tried to write a thesis on the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. Reviews of most of his novels , based on hazy memories of them, are now here.

---

02/09/2009:

A review of The New Rulers of the World

---

31/08/2009:

the crumbling coast

---

29/08/2009:

• A review of Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update
• Photos.

Wicken Fen

---

26/08/2009:

• Several reviews of books added that I read aeons ago.
• Photos.

Photos

---

21/08/2009:

• A review of Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour .

  "Waugh wrote a trilogy of novels set in the Second World War, chronicling the deflating military experiences of the well-meaning, put-upon upper class Catholic, Guy Crouchback. These novels were Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender..." More

• Photos.

3 photos

---

10/08/2009:

here are a few

---

27/07/2009:

Photos:

Photos from Yorkshire.

---

22/07/2009:

Photos:

Photos of pylons.

---

15/07/2009:

That R S Thomas knew how to do it.

---

13/07/2009:

Book reviews are now database-driven. For you, the non-existent user who is ever in my mind, this means that you can open each review in its own page rather than scrolling through the whole lot, among other stuff that you couldn't care less about.

---

10/07/2009:

Photos:

Photos of Devil's Dyke near Burwell.

---

06/07/2009:

A review of Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes.

---

04/07/2009:

Photos:

another trip to Norfolk

---

01/07/2009:

Photos:

More photos from Yorkshire.

---

26/06/2009:

A review of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin.

---

25/06/2009:

Photos of:

Reach wood

Skipton

Leeds

---

/06/2009:

Some more Amazon lists added to the Music page.

---

13/06/2009:

A review of Ungeduld des Herzens by Stefan Zweig.

---

08/06/2009:

The layout of the page of my poetic efforts has been de-cluttered (at least that's the idea).

---

02/06/2009:

Photos:

Norfolk coast

---

25/05/2009:

Photos from:

Walks near Ely and Reach

A spin up to Norfolk

---

19/05/2009:

• Gloomy ruminations on the BNP.
• Photos.

wet hills

---

17/05/2009:

• Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast added to the "Life's Too Short" Unfinished Book Reviews page.
• Photos.

Photos of relatives, etc.

---

01/05/2009:

Photos:

East Anglian skies

---

28/04/2009:

Photos:

Ovine gangland

Cambridge

Long Melford

---

21/04/2009:

• A review of The Search by C P Snow.
• Photos.

yet more photos of Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire

---

17/04/2009:

• A couple of books added to the Books I Couldn't Finish page.
• Photos.

More photos

---

14/04/2009:

Photos:

Easter Monday photos.

---

12/04/2009:

Photos:

Easter Sunday photos.

---

08/04/2009:

Photos:

more photos of Newmarket

---

02/04/2009:

Photos:

Recent photos

---

20/03/2009:

• A review of The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.
• Gillian Welch's Revival added to the list of favourite pop CDs.
• Paul Simon's Essential Paul Simon added to it too.
• Further updates to the Pop CD catalogue.
• Photos.

fenphotos

---

21/02/2009:

• A review of Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist by Russell McCormmach.
• Photos.

obscure parts of Cambridgeshire

---

11/02/2009:

Some updates to the Pop CD catalogue.

---

07/02/2009:

Photos:

engineers frolic

---

02/02/2009:

Photos:

Snow in the Science Park.

---

25/01/2009:

A review of The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge.

---

08/01/2009:

Photos:

Photos of snow.

---

07/01/2009:

A review of Doctor Copernicus by John Banville.

---

06/01/2009:

Yorkshire and Lancashire

---

01/01/2009:

Yorkshire

---

28/12/2008:

A review of a book about Superstrings.

---

22/12/2008:

A review added of The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa.

---

07/12/2008:

Devil's Dyke

---

06/12/2008:

Photos:

---

29/11/2008:

Photos:

---

16/11/2008:

Photos of:

Yorkshire

The Cambridge Children in Need Fun Run

Lode

---

09/11/2008:

Anglesey Abbey

Cambridge Science Park

Brimham Rocks

---

13/10/2008:

Reach Wood

---

28/09/2008:

Photos:

Photos

---

26/09/2008:

Alaska

Seattle

---

24/09/2008:

A review of A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin.

---

21/09/2008:

Photos of:

Flying to Seattle

Washington State

British Columbia

Alaska

(More to follow.)

---

23/08/2008:

A review of The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton.

---

24/07/2008:

Photos of:

Flying to California

California

Flying back from California

---

08/07/2008:

Cambridge

Cromer

naughty Norwich

---

02/07/2008:

Photos:

photos

---

29/06/2008:

A review of The Nature of Consciousness by Susan Pockett.

---

26/06/2008:

Photos:

photos

---

14/06/2008:

A review of An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge.

---

07/06/2008:

Here's some new stuff:

• A review of Author, Author by David Lodge
• Photos.

Photos from the last month

---

03/05/2008:

Photos:

Photos

---

14/04/2008:

Photos:

Photos

---

27/03/2008:

A review added of Erwin Schrödinger's What is Life?

---

19/03/2008:

A blog entry on the coming end of civilisation. Enjoy.

---

18/03/2008:

Chester and Yorkshire

---

05/03/2008:

A review added of The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.

---

21/02/2008:

Science Park

---

09/02/2008:

Photos:

photos

---

26/01/2008:

A review added of Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks.

---

05/01/2008:

• A review of Oleander, Jacaranda by Penelope Lively.
• A review of a book about Fawlty Towers.
• Photos.

Some photos

---

15/12/2007:

A review of Penelope Lively'sMoon Tiger.

---

27/11/2007:

• A review of a biography of R S Thomas, who was a Welsh poet.
• Photos.

Yorkshire

---

27/10/2007:

Photos:

Anglesey Abbey autumn photographs

---

25/10/2007:

York

---

21/10/2007:

• Updates to the Pop CD catalogue.
• Photos.

Bury St. Edmunds, Lavenham and Cambridge

---

20/10/2007:

• A review of a biography of DH Lawrence.
• Photos.

photos

---

11/10/2007:

Photos:

photos

---

30/09/2007:

John Hiatt's Slow Turning added to the Pop CDs page.

---

26/09/2007:

Photos:

Photos

---

16/09/2007:

Saffron Walden

---

10/09/2007:

A review of Love, etc by Julian Barnes.

---

08/09/2007:

Cambridge Dragon Boat Festival

---

05/09/2007:

Photos:

Cambridge Science Park

---

03/09/2007:

dragon boat practice session

---

30/08/2007:

Photos:

Photographic

---

27/08/2007:

Yorkshire

---

19/08/2007:

A review of Goodbye to All That.

---

13/08/2007:

dual carriageway

---

06/08/2007:

Norfolk

---

30/07/2007:

Photos:

Photos

---

26/07/2007:

Photos:

---

22/07/2007:

woods

pylons

---

09/07/2007:

Rob and Margo's wedding

a couple of days with the parental units

---

02/07/2007:

• A review of Oxygen: the Molecule that made the World.
• Photos.

Chippenham Fen

---

11/06/2007:

Photos:

just outside Cambridge

---

06/06/2007:

Photos of:

Stamford

Yorkshire

Lancaster

Arnside

---

19/05/2007:

New:

• A review of The Russian Interpreter by Michael Frayn.
• A review of The Secrets of Self-Hypnosis by Adam Eason.
• Updates to the Pop CD catalogue.
• Photos.

Kedington

---

10/05/2007:

A review of Elkhonon Goldberg's The Executive Brain added.

---

08/05/2007:

Photos:

Photos

---

30/04/2007:

Photos:

Sudbury

---

28/04/2007:

Photos:

photos

---

18/04/2007:

A review added of Thinks... by David Lodge.

---

15/04/2007:

Photos:

Some photos of some of Suffolk

---

14/04/2007:

A review of Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks.

---

10/04/2007:

Easter weekend up north

---

05/04/2007:

Burwell Fen

---

01/04/2007:

Photos:

---

12/03/2007:

Photos:

photos

---

07/03/2007:

Photos:

photos

---

04/03/2007:

Photos:

lunar eclipse

---

26/02/2007:

A review added of a biography of André Gide. He was a French writer.

---

03/02/2007:

• The Manic Street Preachers' Know Your Enemy added (with some reservations) to the Pop CDs page.
• Having just added to the oBlog page I'm concerned about the impression it gives of me as a raging head-case, although not concerned enough (yet) to stop writing it.

---

29/01/2007:

Albums by Neil Diamond and Johannes Schmoelling added to the Pop CDs page.

---

21/01/2007:

Photos:

fenny photos

---

16/01/2007:

A page of brief photo notes added.

---

13/01/2007:

To celebrate the 5th anniversary (*) of me having nothing better to do with my spare time, Dogsticks has been given a garish new look.

The site's optimised for Firefox. In Internet Exploder, some of the headings are a little oversized but I think it's basically OK.

There are one or two small usability/design gremlins still lurking that I intend to get around to fixing some time in the next geological epoch.

Another minor change is that headings in the Photos pages are now clickable, so you can cross-click between dates and places until you find something more interesting to do.

For those non-existent people who care, here's what the site used to look like:

(*) To the day, as it happens.

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06/01/2007:

Yorkshire

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03/01/2007:

• Updated the UK Poetry Magazines page.
• Photos.

More photos

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31/12/2006:

Photos:

Post-Xmas photos

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23/12/2006:

oBlog updated with festive spleen.

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17/12/2006:

• Pop CD catalogue updated.
• Photos.

photos

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10/12/2006:

Photos:

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09/12/2006:

oBlog added.

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08/12/2006:

A review of yet another of those "science and spirituality" books added, but actually this one - The Self-Aware Universe - is quite interesting.

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06/12/2006:

Berlin

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25/11/2006:

Photos:

Yorkshire

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15/11/2006:

Photos:

by the B1102

in the Science Park

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12/11/2006:

Cambridge

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11/11/2006:

• A poem accepted for publication.
• Photos.

Anglesey Abbey

Science Park

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09/11/2006:

Farewell to Bleak House after 10 months.

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04/11/2006:

Photos:

Anglesey Abbey

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01/11/2006:

Photos:

Science Park

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21/10/2006:

Some stuff added to the Pop CD catalogue.

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14/10/2006:

A review of Phantoms in the Brain by VS Ramachandran added.

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09/10/2006:

A review of The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey added.

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30/09/2006:

• Publication dates added to the Poems page.
• Schubert's 9th Symphony added to the Classical Music page.

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23/09/2006:

Photos:

octagon tower

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13/09/2006:

the Science Park

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10/09/2006:

Some more bits added to the Classical Music page.

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02/09/2006:

the Yorkshire Dales

in Wales

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22/08/2006:

A random photo thumbnail now appears on the home page, as you can see. You can click it if you want.

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20/08/2006:

Random quotations now grace this home page.

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05/08/2006:

Ely

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30/07/2006:

Stuff:

• Pop CD Catalogue updated.
• Photos.

Saffron Waldon

telegraph poles

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27/07/2006:

Go Ape!

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23/07/2006:

Bury St. Edmunds

Ely

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16/07/2006:

Photos:

photographs of Ely

Sudbury

Lavenham

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14/07/2006:

New science book review: The Space Between Our Ears by Michael Morgan.

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08/07/2006:

A review of Jorge Luis Borges's Fictions added.

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20/06/2006:

Newark-on-Trent, Gargrave and Skipton

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16/06/2006:

Photos:

photos of various places

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26/05/2006:

Two poems accepted for publication: this one and this one.

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24/04/2006:

The poetry magazines response times page has been funked up slightly.

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17/04/2006:

A review of a book about Information Theory added.