May 13, 2023 | Non-Fiction, Travel |
Henry Williamson, the author of Tarka the Otter, loved the abundance and variety of living creatures in this countryside, and for seven years he lived and farmed five miles along the coast at Stiffkey. When Dudley returned home after tea, this is where I went,...
Feb 11, 2023 | Essays, Non-Fiction, Travel |
There is no anti-depressant quite like sea-swimming, and Holkham is where I usually go when I’m feeling sad. Striking out into the enormous expanse of cold sea, over the vast sands, I immerse myself like the fox ridding himself of his fleas. I leave my devils on the...
Aug 29, 2020 | Non-Fiction, Travel |
I am wary of the dangers of fetishizing dialect and archaism – all that mollocking and sukebinding Stella Gibbons spoofed so brilliantly in Cold Comfort Farm (1932). Wary, too, of being seen to advocate a tyranny of the nominal – a taxonomic need to point and name,...
