Yesterday we went castle-creeping in Wales. Conveniently Carreg Cennen is within walking, splashing, stile-crossing, gate-vaulting distance of where we are staying. We met sheep, horses and English Longhorn cattle along the way.
The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes were first awarded in 1919, so happy birthday and may there be many happy returns. Unlike the not-Man Booker you will have read many of the authors and some of the winning books. I think I’ve read eighteen titles in the fiction category; fewer in biography.
The Arcadian purlieus of Chiswick House are a Garden of Eden post-Fall. Rats are commonplace and now I have seen red-eared terrapins or, as our friends across the pond call them, red-eared sliders.
I spent a week in Libya in November 2005 ; I took a direct flight to Tripoli to meet friends who were already in the country; I only had hand luggage; this had consequences.
Walking in Chiswick in the evening I thought about Simon Raven. Like Leslie Charteris, Dornford Yates, John Buchan and Sapper I am the last generation that will read him.
James Agate was a drama critic for The Sunday Times and the BBC. Between 1935 and his death in 1947 he published nine volumes of diaries. Wryly he called them Ego.
I share some of the same interests and initials as CB. He is a Victorian, a Norfolk man, no fool; he went to St John’s Cambridge (BA) and Trinity Oxford (MA).