A Complete Unknown
There were moments while watching the film A Complete Unknown when I was almost in tears. This was not because of the nostalgic revisit to Dylan’s music that I grew up with, powerfully though the film recreates its beginnings. Well, partly, of course. But mostly because of dissonance and disappointment across the decades since.
Cadiz
What distinguishes modern Cadiz? One thing indubitably- the magnificent, 3 plus kilometre Constitution of 1812 bridge, opened 10 years ago this year, which links the city to the north-westerly mainland. It completes a triad of ways of getting into the city without a boat: the long, thin isthmus on which Cadiz perches, and the earlier late twentieth century bridge to the east.
Milton Keynes and Vanessa Bell
Between late October 2024 and early January 2025 I’ve been in two cities that boast a lengthy central road or vista: Washington DC and Milton Keynes.
The juxtaposition is unfair. The National Mall in Washington is imperial: end-stopped by the Capitol and the Washington Monument, wide and green, and flanked by large and wonderful neo-classical (for the most part) buildings.
There’s a pub in Kentish Town called the Crash and Fail (also known as the Bull and Gate). Owned by the once estimable Young’s Brewery, it’s a large place, with a long curving bar fronting the frontage; a vast room at the back (once a music venue) and a spacious upstairs, with another bar.
Welcome to Your Special Crowd:
Timed Entry in Exhibitions
What is the point of timed entry to exhibitions? It cannot be to lessen crowds: experience all to clearly gives the lie to that hypothesis.
A Case of French Wine for Professor Rorty
In a recent edition of the London Review of Books the Novelist and Francophile Julian Barnes reviews a book titled A Thirst for Wine and War: The Intoxication of French Soldiers on the Western Front.
Washington DC
I failed to read my guidebook before a recent brief trip to Washington. This was not because of lack of time: I had bought the Rough Guide in 1998, just before going to the US for a family funeral.
