On the overpasses, cars crawl through the mirage, each one a sealed bubble of air-conditioned defiance. But the city doesn’t care. The heat is indifferent, eternal. It radiates from the concrete, rises in waves from the road, presses down from above: a three-dimensional sauna of light and dust. Somewhere behind all that sun-glare, the desert waits, unchanged and unimpressed. Continue reading Heat and Dust
The Burj Khalifa points into the sky like a Qibla compass, its needle turned upwards towards Allah (Subḥānahu wa taʿālā). … Continue reading Sim City
But it’s not one that a Jack Tar would recognise. Instead of oakham, gunpowder smoke, tobacco and rum, I can smell oak polish, high-end perfume, old wood, and new money. It’s a curious blend, like Chanel No.5 dabbed behind the ears of Admiral Nelson. Continue reading The Liberty Timbers
The hills rise behind Abergavenny like a wall built by giants, steep, green, and unyielding. They are the town’s backdrop … Continue reading The Riddle of the Stones
The glass blade of The Shard glitters above me, slicing into a flawless July sky. From street level, its steel ribs and glass facets look impossibly steep, tapering into a vanishing point so sharp it could pierce flesh. I pause beneath its mirrored flank, framed by the leaves of a London plane tree, and feel the familiar Southwark hum: the rattle of trains, the cries from Borough Market, the old bones of the city pressed up against this gleaming newcomer. Continue reading The Shard
Climbing through the old gate, the heat is instant and enveloping. The stones radiate the morning’s stored warmth; lizards dart along the ramparts. I follow the rough path upward to the bell tower, where a single bronze bell hangs under a weathered brick arch. Continue reading The Tower of Gaucín
Our road to Corton had begun in London, but not in the present day. It stretched back to 1760, when my ancestor, Matthew Blakiston, served as Lord Mayor of London. Continue reading Return to the Wylye Valley
It was at the back of a cupboard, in an album whose pages had curled and yellowed with age. The … Continue reading Blinman Revisited
A bell tolls. Its sound rolls across the village: slow, deliberate, resonant, as though each stroke is being rung not … Continue reading St. Mary’s Dymock
The dome of Herefordshire sky above Kilpec is so wide and blue it seems like a theatre backdrop, flecked with … Continue reading Strange Faces
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