The Last Organ Maker of Bethnal Green
An essay on the mastery of the Mander Workshop who have built the organ for the Queen’s 60th anniversary to be placed in Westminster Abbey later this year.
Spark: A Landscape of Letters and Life
An essay exploring the letters and life of Muriel Spark using her archives.
Shadow Dance
My shadow kissed your hands’ shadow as the sun set. Your hands’ shadow put the shadow of a grape…
The Silence of Nudists
I watched an old nudist tonight wading from the bank of the river, his frail limbs the glowing white…
The Burghers of Calais, after Auguste Rodin
Connoisseurs of the smart move, appraising the prices of commodities and men, they stepped up against their instincts, their…
Louis MacNeice
That saturnine, mercurial Irishman would sit in bars and scribble lines on beer-mats, not bothering tra-la to scan mechanically…
Les Pieds de Dieu
When the bluebottle lands on the mantelpiece and settles on a note tucked behind Granddad’s carving of something, …
Will Wonders Never Cease?
I’ll get in the water someday, my trick will fail, and then goodnight. –
Harry
Houdini…
Goodbye, Crocodile
From the house I can see the path that leads to the valley. That is where I will go…
Thomas Hughes Headland
In 1858 Dickens began his series of lucrative public reading tours, which for the past five years had been…
Postcolonialism for Beginners
It’s already dark when we leave the beach. The sun has dropped below the horizon with a speed that…
Triptych for their Mother
I OLWEN MAY After the cow parsley, after the may, into midsummer as pierce-eyed as a sparrowhawk there in…
Bluebeard’s Wife
Bearing my unicorn’s horn Above my plucked forehead Bare as an egg – Flood silver, pouch of gold The…
Anniversary
A year past her death my watch went haywire, not the hours but the days and dates – jumping…
Terra Nova
Go to the garden gray with granite cobbles where daisy, fern and dusty miller wince in sun, where indolent…
Letters from Iris Murdoch to Alex Colville
Jean Iris Murdoch, the only child of a father who was a civil servant and a mother who aspired…
Thinking the Unthinkable: Life after Mandela
An essay considering South Africa after Mandela