Monthly Archives: May 2013

My Favourite Pictures: The Great Iron Bridge (1779)

I’ve been a very keen photographer all my life, starting as a child with a box Brownie, then moving on to a large Ilford, which I can remember taking to the Farnborough Air Show several years running. Later I acquired … Continue reading

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Late Spring in the Garden

Time for a quick post before I immerse myself in the frantic, if cultured world of the Hay-on-Wye Festival. Time, too, for a quiet stroll through the garden and assessing the state of the season – and we still haven’t … Continue reading

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Nearly A Real Writer!

If I am completely honest with myself (something I try to do as infrequently as possible) I’ve always wanted to be a real writer. ‘But you are!’ I hear my sheepdog Twink bark loyally from outside my office’s open window. … Continue reading

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For Where is Chatteris?

I can’t think that I’ve lived for as long as I have without discovering the band Half Man Half Biscuit. I thought my life was complete after buying the Leyton Buzzards’ double-sided classic ‘I Don’t Want to Go to Art … Continue reading

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Grow Your Own. On Spuds and Broad Beans: Better Late than Never

Is the season at last starting to catch-up? If you’d asked me that a week ago, I’d have probably said yes. Now I’m not so sure, as I sit at my desk, with the south-westerly wind howling around the rafters. … Continue reading

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Of Crowd-funding and Writing

Or should that be: on writing and crowd-funding? In other words, which comes first? I began musing along these lines when I finished Chapter 6 (of 10) in the book I’m currently writing for Penguin. I’d been discussing the impact … Continue reading

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A Moment of Reality

I spent three years as a student at Cambridge and never did so many things. I never visited the Fitzwilliam Museum. I never went inside King’s College Chapel. And I never visited Madingley American Cemetery. I soon put the first … Continue reading

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Hold Everything! Alan Cadbury Image Discovered

I’ve been trying to find a picture of Alan Cadbury because the nice people at Unbound thought I ought to give him some publicity in my blog, what with Hay-on-Wye coming up and everything. But when it came to looking through … Continue reading

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The Compassion of Solitude

I can’t imagine how grim it must be to be a senior member of the Royal Family and always in the public eye. I think it’s the difficulty of getting away from people that makes life in the modern world … Continue reading

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Forget the Nuclear Winter: It’s a Nuclear Spring!

I was planning to write a nice considered blog about planting potatoes and broad beans – both jobs that I would normally do in mid- or late March – but it has been such a late season. The trouble with … Continue reading

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