The discovery of Herne Hill has been reported in the press. Again. It happens, on average, once a decade. Yet, like America, it was always in plain sight. Of course, Columbus, to his dying day, believed he’d sailed to the Far East, and in any case he spent almost all his time exploring the so-called…
I had visited to Athens twice before: once in 1971, when I was 16, and once with my wife Anne, in 2000. Only for a couple of days in each case; all I can really remember is traipsing up to the Acropolis and visiting two or three museums. This year we decided to spend four…
It is easy to forget that 40 years ago our country (my country, that is) was at war. Very easy for someone of my generation to forget that it happened four decades ago. And even easier for subsequent generations, because there has been little about it in the news (not that I wish to be…
The BBC reminds us that the UK's first lockdown began a year ago today. At that point 364 people had died; now the total has reached 126,172. Over half the adult population has been vaccinated: an incredible achievement, many times better than what any other European country has achieved, and yet life has not returned…
Having lived in Wirral and Oxford until I was 22, I'd rarely travelled on the Tube until I started working in Upminster. Even then, I travelled mostly by bus or I walked. It took me a while to work out where the lines were connected, how to avoid the interchanges with the longest walks, and…
We finally made our way out of London on Bank Holiday Monday (how can you tell during a lockdown?) and drove south for an hour or so into Kent past Churchill's house, Chartwell. It was the first time either of us had ventured more than four miles from home for 10 weeks. It felt odd…
How are you coping? If you feel you are coping, that is? As I noted to a friend, I veer between manic activity and shameful indolence on a daily basis. At first, upon seeing my wife spend all day seated at the dining room table in one videoconference after another, I experienced a bout of…
Memories of 1980s Oxford, for the second time this month. In the same week in which I received an invitation to the Osma Centenary Symposium, Andrew informed me that he'd turned up a cassette tape from 1982 while looking (inevitably) for something else. He digitised it and emailed the result to Bernard and me. The…
Symposium, amongst other things, can mean "a one-day conference". Who knew it had to be just for the one day? (Not Plato for sure.) Last week I was invited to a symposium at Oxford. Some time ago I blogged about my trip to Madrid at Easter 1980, when I was 25 years old. This memorable…
I am an enthusiastic, if very limited, musician. I don't even think of myself as a musician - and neither does anyone else! I've never been able to read music properly, I've never had a lesson and I am certainly no virtuoso on any instrument. But music means a lot to me, and not just…
The Wight Stuff 