As we slosh through a wet summer it’s good to spend a little time reflecting on water as a vibrant and vivifying thing.
Review: ‘Landfill’, Tim Dee (Little Toller, 2018)
This is a book about gulls, but it’s a good deal else, too: it’s an exploration of waste, a rummaging, bent double and elbows-deep, in human detritus.
Country Diary: golden plovers shine, even in the winter
Until the flock tilts towards the just-risen sun, I’m not sure what I’m watching, over the arable fields that abut the seashore here.
New Humanist essay: The Cult Of Nature Writing
They are haunted by visions. They are visited by strange dreams. They are the nature writers, and they bring us wisdom from the wilderness.
The Author essay: The Paradox Of Tragedy
Maybe, if we cry at books, we cry because we just don’t know what else to do.
New Statesman review: ‘Our Place’, Mark Cocker (Cape, 2018)
Cocker is an unlikely radical in some ways, but at bottom the book he’s written – however measured, equable and intelligent – is a call for revolution.
TLS review: ‘Ground Work’, Tim Dee ed. (Cape, 2018)
The weight of the prevailing aesthetic – today favouring the brooding and sublime, the sensitive, the straight-faced – is as heavy as ever.
New Humanist feature: The Truth About Brainwashing
“Brainwashing” is, above all, a process. It’s not about telling people stuff that’s not true until they simply start to believe it. It twists control dials at a far deeper level than that.
New Statesman review: ‘Darker With The Lights On’, David Hayden (Little Island Press, 2018)
The framing of this debut collection by Dublin-born Hayden is insistently absurdist.
Richard Smyth 