Travel
Cherry is to Japan as hawthorn is to…
In England recently, it was hawthorn season. In Dreaming Spies, Russell reflects on the resemblance to cherry blossoms: The …thick white hawthorn blossom overhead made me imagine for an instant that I was kneeling for a hanami, setting out a picnic beneath flowering trees.
Read MoreSheep; gorse: Sussex
I spent a few days in Sussex recently, and… In my seven weeks of peripatetic reading amongst the sheep (which tended to move out of my way) and the gorse bushes (to which I had painfully developed an instinctive awareness) I had never before stepped on a person…
Read MoreMichelham mysteries
The English countryside is as studded with gems as a royal tiara. It would be a lifetime’s work to see all the castles, manor houses, religious houses, garden follies, historical buildings, and the rest—and that’s before one adds gardens, archaeological sites, and actual natural beauties onto the list. Now, I appreciate the big names on…
Read MoreThe Museum of Fabulousness
On Friday I made the trip back into London from the city’s Western Reaches, headed this time to my favorite non-grandmother’s-attic museum, the Museum of London. From the Stone Age river-side village to Roman Londinium to Victoria’s smoke-choked London, the museum uncovers the city’s layers as archaeological digs have done– brilliantly presented to prove…
Read MoreLove for Victoria (& Albert too)
Wednesday we (ie: self and daughter’s family with two small persons) reluctantly extracted ourselves from the farmyard near Thame where we’ve been talking to cows and magpies the past couple of weeks and flung ourselves at London, to insert said daughter’s family onto an aeroplane Thursday morning. A process that proved rather more troublesome than…
Read MoreWaterperry gardens
My mother made precisely one trip out of the westernmost coast of the United States. In the summer of 1984, I took her to England for three weeks: all her lifetime’s travel in less than a month. We were mostly in Oxford, where she reveled in the sound of the bells, the boats on the…
Read MoreThat damp English crimate
Thursday I set off for London…in the rain. I got to London in the rain, wrangled my wheelie up many steps from Paddington (the tube side) and sploshed to my hotel, checked in, dried out, then crossed London in the rain to have tea with Val McDermid, whom I haven’t seen in far, far too long.…
Read MoreEngland events
One an interesting difference between the UK and the US, from a writer’s point of view, is that bookshops in the UK look upon events with mistrust, and the offer of a passing writer to sign their books on their shelves receives a look of befuddlement. “Why,” these good people clearly wonder, “would readers want you…
Read MoreThat man follows me everywhere
Spotted the other day on market day in Thame:
Read MoreMay…may be
The month of May in England…may be sunny, or wet. It may be easy to get around, or not. There may be a clothes dryer where you’re staying, or it may just be a machine that tumbles your wet laundry around and around for a few hours until you give up and drape the well-stewed garments…
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