“If books are part of the soul of any house, then bookshops are the equivalent for a town” (Alexander McAll Smith). Rachel Phipps’  pocket-sized  Woodstock Bookshop has become a hub of literary interest in a few short years.  It confounds the pessimistic (some would say realistic) view that independent bookshops are doomed. But a thriving […] Read more

Simon Digby   In a small room below the major space devoted to Francis Bacon and Henry Moore,  is a selection of delightful miniature paintings collected by my friend Simon Digby and bequeathed by him to the Ashmolean Museum where, in the eighties, he was Assistant Curator (the only paid job he ever had). The […] Read more

Twenty Years Back… This has been one of those mythical summers, when bees get drunk on obscenely gorgeous roses and honeysuckle, when Panama hats and straw boaters are essential wardrobe items, when proper thirst assumes reality, when grass shrivels and sun burns blisters on the skin. In June Wimbledon recorded 112F (surely not- must be […] Read more

    The olive groves were silent, the blue sea rolled below, still  queasy after the night’s storm and no one was around as I walked around Patrick Leigh Fermor’s  house absorbing the atmosphere and trying to find traces of the late writer’s presence. Although I couldn’t see into his garden, I managed to get […] Read more

I have become like Miss Betsy Trotwood. “Let me see you ride a donkey over my green again, and I’ll knock your bonnet off. And tread upon it!” A short time ago- at 12.30 am to be precise- I heard suspicious sounds on the street as I sat at my desk. I raised the sash […] Read more

Everything is rotten in the state of India, but maybe not quite as black and white as it sometimes looks to the returning native. We can only blame ourselves for our lazy, laid back, class ridden, caste riddled, feudal, corrupt, filthy society. The rupee has fallen by 20 percent (incompetent management at the top), investors […] Read more

Taking over a derelict allotment which was being  strangled by couch grass, bindweed and mare’s tail and turning it into a productive source of fresh food has been a  pleasure-filled challenge. Six months from Slough of Despond (or as a friend’s late mother, who had a stock of wonderful phrases at the ready, used to […] Read more

  “He sat in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammeh, on her old platform, opposite the old Ajaib gher, the Wonder House, as the natives called the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that ‘fire-breathing dragon’, hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror’s loot.” The opening sentence […] Read more

Here is a list of weeds- sometimes despised and denigrated, sometimes destroyed but even in these times of hardship and penury almost never sought, or foraged for food or medicinal use. I have tasted, crushed, sniffed and cooked with: Mayweed- pineapple scent, good in apple cake. Useful for gastric flu, headaches, rheumatic pains. Flourishes on […] Read more