Jun 27, 2026 | Essays, Non-Fiction, Travel |
We are all young barbarians still enthralled by our new toys. What other meaning can our air races have? A man flies higher, runs faster. We forget the reason why. For the moment the race itself outweighs its purpose. And this is always so. For the colonial soldier...
Jun 20, 2026 | Essays, Non-Fiction |
Throughout the nineteen-twenties Gould haunted the office of The Dial, now dead, the most highbrow magazine of the time. Finally, in its April, 1929, issue, The Dial printed one of his shorter essays, “Civilization.” In it he rambled along, referring to skyscrapers...
May 9, 2026 | Non-Fiction
Be Sceptical of the Quick Route Underneath a motorway there was once a road, underneath the road there was a lane, underneath the lane there was a track and underneath the track there was once an animal path. Hoof prints under the concrete. It is the animal path that...
Apr 4, 2026 | Essays, Non-Fiction |
‘David has decided,’ one of his aides explained, when I met him later, ‘that one cannot criticise a war when there are troops on the ground.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well … we have had that debate. But he feels it is a principle of British government.’ ‘But Churchill criticised the...
Dec 13, 2025 | Essays, Non-Fiction |
Stop Saying That the Earth Is Doomed You may be doomed, I may be doomed, the earth not so much. And anyway, do you have any idea how offensive that is to the gods? To any amount of offended magics? Especially to your children? To the perpetual and ongoing miraculous?...
Nov 22, 2025 | Essays, Non-Fiction, Travel |
Ynys Enlli was among the many remote places of the west and north-west coasts of Britain and Ireland to be settled between around 500 and 1000 AD. During those centuries, an extraordinary migration occurred. Monks, anchorites, solitaries, and other devout itinerants...
