-
Maps
I’ve always loved maps. When very young, as a Christmas present, I was given a very sturdy jigsaw puzzle of North America. I spent a lot of time playing with it, the result being I knew (and still know) the names and location of every U.S. state and Canadian province. Somewhat later, my Scottish godparents… Read more
-
History II – A Life’s Passion
It probably doesn’t need to be said to anyone who’s looked at The Ravenstones website or read my previous blogs, but I am an avid reader of books on history, both modern and ancient. The list of authors and their works that I value is far too long to include in a brief post. But… Read more
-
My Brush with Death
We interrupt these regular scheduled blog posts to bring you a brief update. On Friday, September 18, I was scheduled to have a hernia operation at a nearby surgical clinic. I keep a daily journal (Moleskine large-size, if you must know), and the last paragraph of my entry for the day before — after a… Read more
-
Writing About Animals
Regular readers of these posts will find that I make regular recourse to the works of Bruce Handy, the author of a wonderful book about children’s literature called Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2017). Bruce Handy is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and… Read more
-
A World of Animals
My godparents, Joan and James Lindsay, lived in the County of Sutherland, the most northerly part of Scotland (save for the Orkney and Shetland Islands), in a little village on the North Sea named Golspie (pop. 1350 today). Every Christmas they would send me books of some sort, all highly anticipated and happily received. For… Read more
-
The Fantasy Writer (Part 2)
The Fellowship, The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2015) provides a detailed account of the famous quartet of mid-20th century Oxford-based authors (J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams), in particular how they expressed their longing for tradition and re-enchant through… Read more
