It will do what it is supposed to do
Listening time: 7 minutes. This marvelous prose-poem comes from a travel book by the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski,...
And this is my epic…
Listening time: under 4 minutes.
A marvelous account of a butcher bursting in to Lawrence Durrell's office during...
The mule and the mare
Listening time: under 3 minutes
Grossman writes with great empathy of animals and their experiences. Here an...
My publisher, falsely so called…
Listening time: under 3 minutes.
I loved this drawn out account of Thoreau's dealings with a publisher wanting...
Podcast review – Adam Nicolson’s Sea Room
Listening time: 19 minutes. Having inherited, at the age of 21, the Shiants, three small islands east of...
On hearing Beethoven for the first time
Listening time: 4 minutes. A favourite quotation from a favourite novel, Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely...
Of pens and pencils
Listening time: under 3 minutes.
This is a charming account of negotiating communist bureaucracy at the height of...
Poems for my family 006 – Cavafy
This poem has been in my mental saddlebags for about a quarter of a century. I can't remember how I...
Podcast review – Elizabeth Goudge’s Little White Horse
Listening time: 13 minutes. One of my top two children's books of all time, I first read Elizabeth...
Poems for my family 004 – Durrell
Listening time: under 5 minutes.
Durrell has long been a favourite writer and poet. When I first read his Alexandria...
Podcast review – Barry Lopez’ Arctic Dreams
Listening time: 15 minutes. It’s about a quarter of a century since I first read this moving...
On living forever
Listening time: 2 minutes. This long and winding quotation enchanted me to the extent that I wrote it out...
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