Nigeness

 Yesterday I was walking in the Oxfordshire countryside with my brother and walking friends. It was a gloriously sunny morning – the first i...

Despite appearances, R.S. Thomas, the crag-faced curmudgeon of Sarn-y-Plas, had a tender side, which showed up quite often in his poetry, as...

Yesterday Patrick Kurp posted a poem, 'Larkin's Typewriter'  – a 5-4-5 sonnet evoking Larkin's sad loss of his poetic afflat...

 Manet Day again – the great Edouard's 194th birthday – and I realise that I've never posted on the subject of one of his best-known...

 The dismal weather of this interminable January – grey days, relentless rain, damp cold (the worst sort) – is only to be expected, I suppos...

 This morning Radio 3 noted the 65th anniversary of the first performance of Francis Poulenc's Gloria , in Boston, by the Boston Symphon...

 One of the minor regrettable features of modern life (and there are plenty of major ones, heaven knows, but I'm not going there) is the...