Eight days from 12:00 AM (New York time) December 24th, 2018, to December 31st, WKCR (89.9 FM and wkcr.org) will dedicate all broadcasting to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/wkcr/node/21295 Many of us have a Christmas tradition, a favourite film, or a meal or a gathering in the pub with friends, the local… Continue reading
Is Bluestone green enough for national park Pembrokeshire?
I was at Bluestone in Pembrokeshire in December, 2015, on an important weekend. On the Saturday, the 12th, world governments concluded the Paris Climate Agreement. It was a pivotal moment in the story of the world about us. What would we, as individuals, do? What would governments and industries do, to met those targets of… Continue reading →
85 years ago, Patrick Leigh Fermor sets off on his great walk to Constantinople
DECEMBER 7, 2018 Irongate Wharf, the exact spot where Patrick Leigh Fermor left England in the Stadthouder Willem, as he recounted in A Time of Gifts 85 years ago, on the ebbing afternoon of Saturday, December 9th, 1933, a young man of 19, shrugging off a hangover, with a backpack borrowed from a friend, walked under… Continue reading →
The great (rail) way west – to Pembrokeshire
The holiday express: through trains will run from Paddington to Tenby and West Wales in summer of 2019, continuing a link which began in the days of Queen Victoria. “If there be any one train more than another, the sight of which stirs the patriotic pride of an enthusiastic Great Westernite, it is the Tenby express leaving… Continue reading →
Turkish writer Elif Şafak at Cambridge Literary Festival
Elif Şafak talked to Maureen Freely at the Cambridge Literary Festival, Saturday, November 24th Her latest book Three Daughters of Eve is set in Oxford and Istanbul and focusses on three Muslim women, several men, and one big question. Two university cities, both equally celebrated. But one of them far outpaces the other as… Continue reading →
Celebrate Stonehenge’s saviours, but don’t ignore the bigger story
100 years today (26 October 1918) Cecil Chubb, a Wiltshire barrister and landowner, and his wife, Mary, gave Stonehenge to the nation. Saving the monument from who knows what damage and desecration to the stones and the surrounding land is a public spirited gesture to be celebrated. But even under government control, Stonehenge is not… Continue reading →