Is there still a place for travel writing in the 21st century? In age of mass travel, it’s inevitable that the raison d’etre of travel writing should be questioned. Even today’s armchair travellers have a mass of images and information about the most distant places available at the touch of a screen. But I’d like […]
I’ve just done my last camp of the year. Over the summer, I’ve made a temporary home of seven campsites in south west England and Wales, sometimes accompanied and sometimes alone, at times in a campervan, but mostly in a tent. It’s the first time I’ve attempted this much outdoors living in my native land. […]
What is it about hills? For no obvious reason, they continue to exert a powerful influence over us, just as they did over our ancestors. A testament to what religious historian Mircea Eliade called ‘an almost universal belief in a celestial divine being’, they’ve drawn people up to hold religious ceremonies, live as hermits or […]
2014 brings the centenary of the start of World War One, and the beginning of four years of national commemorations. It’s telling that, in writing that sentence, I nearly typed ‘celebrations’ instead of ‘commemorations’. For the official discourse about the war has a triumphalist tone, one which perfectly expresses a nationalist narrative about the greatness […]
This spring, the world has been a different place for me. I’ll be going about my business, and the voice of a blackbird will detach itself from the acoustic backdrop and pierce my consciousness. Or someone will be talking and I’ll notice that my mind has tuned them out as only so much human white […]
I’ve got a problem with Chris Packham. It’s not, I hasten to add, a personal one: I’ve never met the Springwatch presenter who, as far as I can tell, is a thoroughly decent bloke. In fact, as my generation’s answer to David Bellamy or David Attenborough, I’m profoundly grateful to him for his work as a brilliant communicator about […]
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Living with a Wild God presents the reader with a puzzle. While on a road trip to Death Valley at the age of seventeen, the author has what anyone with the faintest interest in the spiritual will immediately recognise as a mystical experience – a feeling of ecstasy, terrifying awe and a vision of the […]
I’m thrilled that Springwatch is back on our screens. During the three-week outside broadcast, hidden cameras bring the secret life of the creatures around us right into our living rooms, providing the nation with a rare opportunity to watch live TV together. The popularity of the programme – now in its tenth year, having spawned the sibling broadcasts […]