From “The Mark of the Horse Lord”, Rosemary Sutcliff
At first he had been wild with loathing of his new life, but in four years it had become part of him, so that whether he hated or loved it…
Category: the particular
Stained Glass of Augustinian Priory, Fethard
(edit 19th November 2018 – I realised lately that the Our Lady of Fatima window is not “by Harry Clarke” but “by Harry Clarke Studios. Apologies for the error. I…
From “The Spire”, William Golding
So he sat, watching the armies of sparks that wandered through the fire. He spoke sometimes, but not to Father Adam. ‘Yet it still stands.’ Then he moaned and rocked…
Thor Hanson on cultural perception of time
Living in Africa, I soon came to realise that impatience may be an entirely Western phenomenon. Ugandans approach time from a fundamentally different perspective, not as a commodity to be…
The antithesis of anthropomorphism: Tarka the Otter
I have written here before on anthropomorphism, following John Lewis-Stempel’s musings as to whether it is such a dread conceptual offence as it often stated. Recently I read Henry Williamson’s “Tarka…
“the primacy of the material world over the digital”
From Janan Ganesh’s “Notebook” column in the FT, 29/10/16 (firewalled): As the internet stirred at the turn of the 1990s, its distance-closing properties were talked up. Speculative accounts of the near-future…
More thoughts on forest bathing
I have posted before on “forest bathing”; the first post being perhaps a little over-critical of the potential for over-therapeutising what is essentially an attentive walk in the woods, the the second more…
Séamus Sweeney 