A RISING MOON over Christ Church Meadow brought the very successful 2010 Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival to a memorable end yesterday.
The great thing about literary festivals these days is that they are no longer just about ‘literature’ or dominated but the literary establishment. Rather the opposite. Their programmes now are celebrations of great ideas and current controversies which offer… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG

I FOUND  myself the other night a sleepless guest in a house with a great deal of ambient nocturnal light. It came from two high street lamps, neighbours’ security lights and a lot of passing traffic …

My friend’s glazed front door was simply astonishing, a glowing blaze of fiery light which I found hypnotic. Sleepless as I was… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG

A few weeks ago I inadvertently broke the speed limit (37mph in a 30mph area) on the outskirts of Salisbury. Shortly afterwards the Wiltshire Police gave me the option of a statutory fine of £60.00 and three points on my licence or paying a £60.00 fee to attend a Speed Awareness Course with no points and no further questions asked… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG

IT’S AN AWE-INSPIRING business witnessing one of Britain’s premier orchestras recording a major new work by a living composer. But there I was last week in Cardiff, at the BBC’s HQ adjacent to the Millennium Centre, with a select audience of five people, watching the 75-member BBC National Orchestra record Adrian William’s magisterial and profoundly moving new Cello Concerto… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG

I WATCHED WITHOUT pleasure the excuse of an apology given yesterday to the media by Cardinal Sean Brady, the primate of All Ireland, for his role in suppressing the truth about abuse of children in their care by catholic priests. This followed an apologetic sermon in Armagh Cathedral which was the occasion for admitting that he was party to making two children take a vow of… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG

‘Wow!’ you say and want to stop the car and grab your camera and capture the uncatchable – an extraordinary sunset just across that field, past those leafless trees, out over the far beyond of the chalk downland you’re driving across, so striking it seems despite all that to be almost within reach.
So you speed up a bit, look for a lay-by… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG

You have to look hard for colour in the landscape at the moment, even on sunny days. But on drab, drear ones, when the chill factor drags the heartiest walker down, the search becomes nearly pointless. In the snow, which we still have, even more so.

But soon Lesser Celandine will be a bright exception. Last year, when my photograph was

Imtiaz Dharker’s disembodied voice floated into my consciousness during a moment of insomnia when I was listening to the World Service. It kept me awake for an hour. Dharker is a poet who recites her poetry from memory, like ordinary living speech and not in the dirge-like… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG