Mark Charan Newton

I’m currently working through one of the most pleasurable reading experiences of recent times. (This year has been a good year of reading for me.) Durrell is a phenomenal talent. He makes you pine for an age you never knew, as much for the quality of writing if nothing else. His ability to bring character [...]

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A dark valley that retains a near perfect stillness against the quick-moving clouds.
Winter has stripped the land of any dignity.
A lattice of dry-stone wall across the hills.
Drizzle, gathering in huge drops; poised beneath strips of fencing, and from the tips of trees.
Disused barns, or sheds, or storehouses, their roof tiles blighted by lichens, nature reclaiming [...]

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A friend of mine asked me today about the death of the book as a result of the Amazon Kindle. I emailed him some concise reasons why this just SO wasn’t the case:
1 ) People who read a lot of books, love books, the physical thing. Period. They are unlikely to stop buying books because [...]

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A little evenin’ beat. (*Shrugs.) It’s just cool, all right?
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A very interesting point indeed, on what we think of the left and far-right, and how actually, the far-right is very left, when looked at on the genuine political spectrum—and something I always wondered about. I’m not sure how accurate this is, but it’s just one of those things you might find interesting, if you [...]

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Folk pioneer, doing what he does best. I was lucky enough to see him play live a few year back, with bass legend Danny Thompson.
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Read this and it’s taken me a while to form any thoughts on the matter.
So are people really telling you that a life is a wilderness unless it includes a career in epic fantasy ? That seems to me to sum up the self-absorption of the genre… You ask me what you should do next. [...]

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Savernake Forest, just outside of Marlborough. November. The colour becomes intense, the light always more hazy because of the height of the sun. What a combination.
Wind runs through channels here, along the straight paths, gathering momentum, and it dominates your stride. Surprisingly, there is next to no one around; you would have thought better of [...]

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