Chiaroscuro

Yesterday was only my third visit to the Prado but it was the most rewarding as I didn’t wander around aimlessly but concentrated for an hour on just a handful of pictures in the galleries by the main entrance at the top of a double flight of steps.

A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery

‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely. And ‘go on till you come to the end; and then stop.’ (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)

Travels with My Otter

A reader, John Tuffin, recommended Douglas Botting’s biography of Gavin Maxwell when there was an ottery post in August.

Winter in Madrid

CJ Sansom is an author who has found his metier writing historical whodunnit mysteries set in Tudor England with Shardlake as his hunchback lawyer hero. Maybe he chose a lawyer as before he became a full time author he practised as a solicitor.

The Red Hotel

Let’s get this in proportion. There are 24,413 schools in England, or thereabouts, of which fewer than 150 are closed for a short time because of structural problems relating to a type of concrete that has outlived its safe life.

Otter Hunting

“Twilight over meadow and water, the eve-star shining above the hill, and Old Nog the heron crying kra-a-ark! as his slow dark wings carried him down to the estuary.” (First line, Tarka the Otter, Henry Williamson, 1927)

A Classical Education

I prefer to use knives with bone handles at home. Like so many preferences and habits it is because that’s what we did at Barmeath.

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Categorised as Literature