My London by Maggie Butt
I was born, brought up and have lived most of my life in London, and it fits me like a…
Old mother moor by Sarah Westcott
Old mother moor is bitter – peat is the thinnest of comforts the bedrock is recalcitrant as teeth moor like…
Kleist Single Malt by Konrad Muller
Riding He tried to be a soldier. Seven years he spent in the Guards, seven years he described as irredeemably…
A Walk Through Rackham Land by Steven O’Brien
Ideally, if you go into Rackham Land you should go on your own. Take a deep breath and walk. Don’t…
A Gamble with People and Money
Summer Opera, 2017 (Glyndebourne Festival, The Grange Festival, Grange Park Festival at West Horsley, Garsington Opera at Wormsley, Opera…
The Ribbleway by John Gimlette
Wild horses wouldn’t get me to central Lancashire for a bank holiday–or so I thought. In fact, all it took…
Panic
A helicopter quarters the night sky, sets off alarms in my mind. Downstairs, doors forget to lock and there’s…
Walking Through London with Sherlock Holmes
If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the…
The Sandman by Holly Howitt
Quiet: the poet is taking the stage. (Well, it’s not a stage, but a circle of bookshop carpet: Shush, we…
Emotions Run Cool
First Love, Gwendoline Riley, Granta, February 2017, £12.99, 176 pp. (hardcover) ‘How many boyfriends are treated like the father…
White Building
For Paul and Maya Between still life and low relief, the squared off, plain, distempered walls of Japanese size,…
Encountering the Unwelcome
Travelling back from Belgium this summer I was inadvertently caught up in the rush of returning holidaymakers, all making for…
The Hardship of the Voyage
Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Ocean Vuong, Jonathan Cape, April 2017, £9.99, 96 pp. (paperback) Kumukanda, Kayo Chingonyi, Chatto…
Pagan Pleasures and Youthful Subjects
On Pagham Beach, Photographs and Collages from the 1930s, Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London, 25 October – 8 December 2017…