Writing
Filter writing: Sidelines (blog) • Newsletters • Reviews
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Newsletter No. 8: ‘But is it Art?’
iPads · s-town · babylonian astronomy · Patti Smith · James Kelman · star-stuff · golden age of photography · conveying life’s wonders · horses · bees · organ donations
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Grandma’s organ donation
On the mysterious arrival, and equally mysterious disappearance, of a Wurlitzer organ.
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Newsletter No. 7: ‘Hacked and hurt by time’
John Tyndall · Galápagos cormorants · why English is so odd · Thoreau & Darwin · anthropological discoveries · mass-extinction hyperbole · WG Sebald · yellow rattle · Inigo Thomas · Mars exploration
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Orion’s belt-buckle
In celebration of my adopted star.
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Newsletter No. 6: ‘A borrowed dog’
woodpeckers · ambrotype portraits · W.G. Sebald · a deserted hamlet · mission creep · prime meridians · W.H. Hudson · podcasts · street photography · bonkers · tapirs · coiners
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Book review: ‘The Gallows Pole’ by Benjamin Myers
18th-century Yorkshire meets the Sopranos: intrigue, betrayal, murder, and revenge in the Calder Valley.
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Newsletter No. 5: ‘Incongruous owl’
dawn chorus · Simon Armitage · the invention of the telescope · huge, sprawling collaborations · Withnail & I · book smells · re-assembling Darwin’s research notes · converting walks into words · Daniel Dennett · writing letters · humanist politics · dentistry with stone tools · analysing penguin poo · Melissa Harrison · Robert…
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‘Spiritual’ won’t do
In which I seek a better word to describe a profoundly uplifting sensation.
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Book review: ‘Built on Bones’ by Brenna Hassett
15,000 years of urban life and death.
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Book review: ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’ by Annie Dillard
Pulitzer-Prize-winning ruminations on the natural world.
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Book review: ‘Selected Letters of Philip Larkin’ (Anthony Thwaite, ed.)
Hugely entertaining correspondence from one of Britain’s most popular poets.
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Undermining religious tradition: a time-honoured religious tradition
Religious tradition has been being ‘undermined’ in Britain since recorded history began—most of the time by people of a distinctly religious persuasion.