Nigeness

 My preference for short books over long ones will be well known to regular readers of this blog. Here I am ten years ago arguing that the ...

 According to the National Trust (and they're right), apple orchards have been disappearing over the past century and more at an alarmin...

 Today, I learn, was the second anniversary of the first  Covid lockdown – you know, the one that was going to 'flatten the curve' i...

 On this day in 1599 was born, in Antwerp, Anthony Van Dyck, the brilliant portraitist who became one of those foreigners we English adopt f...

 Talking of great Ukrainians, here is some touching and rather wonderful footage of the composer Valentin Silvestrov playing the piano at ho...

 No better time than the present to celebrate a great Ukrainian – Sviatoslav Richter, one of the most extravagantly gifted pianists who ever...

 In a lecture on 'The Relation of Wise Art to Wise Science', published in The Eagle's Nest , Ruskin describes a bullfinch's ...