Month: June 2020

The Falcon Has Flown

Jack, the peregrine falcon chick, took the plunge at 5.00 am on Monday morning. He jumped but an ornithologist would say he fledged.

Jumping Jack

The willow threatened with felling is flourishing as is the peregrine falcon chick, forty-three days old yesterday.

Famine

Van Gogh’s peasants, he painted them in 1885, are startlingly unattractive. His subjects were inspired by The Blessing before Supper by Charles de Groux; a more comely assemblage.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

The Alliance of Literary Societies has more than a hundred members, from Austen to Zamyatin.

Published
Categorised as Literature

Princess Freda

Yesterday Bertie and I walked up the towpath to Richmond for the first time in over three months. During lockdown there had been many too many cyclists, joggers and walkers to use the towpath safely but now it’s back to pre-virus normal and Bertie was off the lead most of the time.

The Empress of Ireland

You can judge this book by its cover; the cover is orange, the endpapers green. Brian Desmond Hurst was born a Protestant in Belfast but converted to Catholicism so an apt reflection of his life.

Lobster Blog

A long time ago I was staying with friends in Cumberland and we were asked out to dinner. Our host and hostess’s home from the outside was more like a manoir than a Cumbrian farmhouse.