I’ve just returned from revisiting the island of Skye after an absence of over a quarter of a century (last visit, June 1994). I’d had such an intensive time taking photos for my book on ‘The Cuillin’ in 1993 – making no less than twelve separate visits in that year alone – that I’d somehow …
Picture: Wikimedia Commons Some thoughts on returning from an idyllic week-long holiday in Cyprus (… well, attending a friend’s wedding). The weather was perfect Mediterranean every day, hot sun with a gentle sea breeze; the dazzling light, the sapphire sea, and the white sand almost too good to be true. And the wedding, on a …
Psychologist, Philosopher, Intellectual Pilgrim I was shocked to discover yesterday that my old friend, the philosopher and psychologist, Zbigniew Kotowicz, had died last September of cancer at the early age of 67. He was one of those rare, multi-faceted individuals who is almost impossible to describe in a few words; his whole being, at heart …
In this extraordinary, alarming new age, in which the western world seems suddenly to be retreating from the core values of civilisation – reason, love, beauty and truth itself, it is more than ever the job of the artist to fight back. The grim situation and the task it presents is beautifully expressed in this great …
Above: The Great Fire of London, 1666. Wikicommons. I’ve been meaning to write a blog about Brexit for a very long time, but the story has been unfolding so fast, and the ramifications have been so many and so vast, that I keep on procrastinating. One of the problems is that the most worrying aspect of …
One of the Christmas presents I received this year was Stanley Kubrick and Me by Emilio D’Alessandro (Arcade Publishing, 2016). I’ve been wanting to read this for some time, and I found it at least as interesting as I expected. Emilio was Kubrick’s long-standing loyal driver and general factotum for over twenty years, and he …
Oh dear. The Telegraph, which this year has regressed from being a respectable broadsheet to a blatant Brexit propaganda rag, has got it wrong again. In its objection to Remainers waving the EU flag this evening at the Last Night of the Proms, it shows that it completely misunderstands both the international spirit of the …
On June 11, the British climbing world lost one of its greatest advocates in the inimitable form of Ken Wilson. For a decade, from 1969 until 1978, through his Mountain magazine, he was a central conduit of information for the whole world of mountaineering – a fount of knowledge and wisdom, and a supreme upholder …
Picture: Crown Copyright/Public Domain On this 100th anniversary of the worst day in British military history, I want to pay tribute to those relatives of mine who fought in both the world wars. There is nothing unusual about them; they were typical of hundreds of thousands of British servicemen who risked, and often gave, their …
January 2018: I’ve reinstated this old post, from June 24 2016, on the front of my website so that anyone coming here can see that I still stand by the judgement I made on that historically disastrous day. I cannot see how the EU referendum result is anything other than a comprehensive disaster, the worst …
I have now been toiling away on my huge project of a biography of my great uncle, George Stainforth, aviator extraordinary, since the beginning of 2011. Meanwhile, since May 2014, my twin brother John has been working on a one-fifth scale radio-controlled model of the Supekrmarine S6B, in which George broke the world speed record in …
On the UK Climbing website that I frequent, the subject of the EU referendum has loomed large in recent threads in the ‘Down the Pub’ forum. Last Wednesday, Roger Webb started a discussion entitled ‘No debate EU referendum thread.’ (http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/) ‘The general idea,’ he explained. ‘is to have a thread where people can put up their …
The Breakers of Britain – my view of the Brexiters, June 20, 2016 Read More »
