While he was in Oxford, I was privileged to host the acclaimed Indian poet Sudeep Sen. He is in the UK to promote his latest anthology Anthropocene. It is endorsed by one of the world authors that I most admire-Amitav
A brilliant,compelling read. Shrenik Rao Editor of the Madras Courier Whether describing how students were ‘sent to the countryside’ or how, after Mao died, young artists hung their experimental work outside the national art gallery, Vetta is always
Shepherd.com is an easy to use well presented new site . Ben Fox it's creator asked me to make recommendations on this subject. https://shepherd.com/best-books/oxford-and-where-town-meets-gown Going with the theme .. here is Sculpting the Elephant: An Alternative Town and Gown Walking
Do you remember this? Radcliffe Observatory Quarter artist in residence, Weimin He, had 60 works of art on hoardings and my poem about the site was also on one. Tower of the Winds is a fabulous record of his six
Gill and I in the unventilated basement. Compare it with Maxwell's council house, Headington Hall https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rtxv?f Good programme about Robert Maxwell who rented Headington Hall from Oxford City Council for £7,500 in 1978 http://www.headington.org.uk/history/listed_buildings/headhillhall.htm? Before we set up at the
On Saturday Live this morning, the poet Simon Armitage was talking about his poem Event Horizon. In 2007, I had the privilege to review an Antony Gormley exhibition also called Event Horizon at the Hayward Gallery - one of the
Today , BBC4 Saturday Live asked listeners to share their stories of leaps in the dark. It started with Ian Rankin describing how he and his wife gave up well paid jobs to renovate an old house in rural France
More memories . I am often surprised that Newsquest recycle features of mine that I wrote for The Oxford Times. They publish them online all over the country like this one in The Warrington Guardian . http://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/news/10582069.Turner_and_Constable__Sketching_from_Nature__Compton_Verney/ It’s interesting reading
Like Grayson Perry’s, Qu Leilei’s art is enthused with a love of humanity. Last night Grayson’s Art Club focused on portraits. It was an exhibition of portraits by Qu Leilei titled’ Everyone’s Life is an Epic’ that kick-started a ten
The UK is fabulously well endowed with Indian and India inspired art . I reviewed many exhibitions including Dancing with the Gods at the RA http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/1146405.Dancing_with_gods/ and Visions of Mughal India at the Ashmolean. https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/9535251.passage-india/ The latter was the collection