Labelling the past

‘This curtain was made from the uniforms of Russian prisoners in the Crimean war’ On the wall was an intricately patched curtain of red, green and black. Amidst the geometric patterns there were tiny, millimetre-wide dots of fabric giving depth and texture to the material. To explain this, just a single line of text. But …

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Science, uncovered

Science Uncovered at the Great North Museum Hancock was public engagement at its best: swords, bacteria, and electronic music.

Nowhere, like here

Erewhon isn’t quite ‘nowhere’ backwards, but it is close enough, and many of the situations that Samuel Butler’s narrator Higgs finds himself in certainly seem backwards to him. Yet the mirror that Butler holds up to our ‘somewhere’ is thought provoking and still relevant nearly a century and a half later. One of the most …

Art in the Wild

Steeper than I imagined, I got up through a combination of running, grabbing, scrambling. Once on top, though, the view from the bridge wasn’t half bad. Looking back over the Grisedale valley that we had walked, and up the other way towards Helvellyn, it was a great spot to admire the expanse of the Lake …

Pedalling

The tinkling of bells and the sound of happy laughter was all you could hear. There were no cars, and all you could see were bikes stretching off into the distance. We were cycling on both sides of the road; there was nothing to be scared of. I was cycling so slowly trying to soak …

Private Island

‘I see no reason why other organisations can’t work within the NHS, but why do they have to be profit making? Why can’t people be satisfied with a good salary and the satisfaction of doing a good thing?’ James Meek doesn’t live up to his name. His book, Private Island, is a tirade against the …

Sheepwrecked

In his book Feral, George Monbiot uses the term ‘sheepwrecked’ to describe the British countryside. I had never realised someone could harbour such resentment against sheep, heather and rhododendrons, but Monbiot does. The book is loosely framed by him living in and then leaving Wales, a place he finds unutterably boring because of the lifeless desert …