Walking into history: Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts

As a reader some books are inevitable. This one had nagged at me for years, before finally, I plunged in and it felt like meeting an old friend.

In between Norwood

The pervading spirit of some places hangs quite obviously in the air. Even if you’re only passing through and not looking very hard, the distinctive atmosphere will soon make itself apparent.

West Norwood isn’t one of those places.

Heading West in the North East: A walk along Hadrian’s Wall

It seems ridiculous now, but until I set out on this walk it hadn’t occurred to me that Wallsend, is literally the Wall’s End. As you follow the course of the walk, there are plenty more Wall inspired place names like this to take in, such as Walltown, Wall and Heddon On The Wall.

Islington’s unexpected Eden

Islington is not exactly blessed with parks and green space. This makes one of the borough’s great unexpected treasures all the more delightful.

A vision from the top deck: The Moorgate Lighthouse

From the top deck of a bus on Moorgate, on the facade of a bank, I once saw a lighthouse sculpted into the corner of the building. It seemed strikingly beautiful and strangely out of place. I couldn’t help wondering who put it there and why…

How to give a city the slip without leaving: a sidle through Nottingham

In every city I’ve lived in, I try finding alternative routes through them that avoid streets where possible and move through parks and other green spaces instead. Here’s a short, but worthwhile one for Nottingham.

Along the not so old straight track

Between the back gardens and traffic jammed streets of North London runs an extraordinary green path: Parkland Walk, once a rail line to the suburbs, now a tree-lined escape from the city, in the middle of a city.

Behind Bristol’s Closed Doors

A new way to go behind the scenes of some of Bristol’s most historic buildings.

On failing to notice a hill in the flatlands

In a park near Ely Cathedral is a strange, tree-covered little bump in the landscape. For a long time I had no idea what it was.

What we read about when we read about ghosts

A ‘spotter’s guide’ to some of the more common themes, obsessions and clichés to be found in non-fiction ghost books.

Coping with the ‘to read’ pile: confessions of an English book-eater

All book lovers and avid readers, whatever type of book or subject matter they’re into, are faced with one great big non-negotiable truth – YOU’LL NEVER READ THEM ALL.

Highbury’s Silent Giants: a second glance at the London Plane tree

A little beyond Highbury Corner, just off the traffic jams and restless hustle of Holloway Road, are some silent giants. The giants in question are trees – any mental association with Arsenal, The Emirates and hushed crowds, or the sylvan stiffness of certain Germanic central defenders, is entirely in your own imagination. Trees, on the…

Whirling

Magpie Tales blog invited people to submit a poem or vignette based on this picture. Here’s mine: The moment never stops, its memory left breathlessly hanging, catching witnesses endlessly off-guard Bewildered in half-sight they hear the blood noise spatter before an uncertainty of silence, A chaos of imbalance twists into canvas Polishing a darkened crimson history until it shines A formless…

The oasis round the back of the station

Every area of urban green space has it’s own particular history. However, in a general sense, it’s probably true to say that the reason for a specific site’s continued existence will be one of three: it’s a cherished survivor, it’s hung on by chance, or it’s been deliberately created in a spot that was previously home to something else.

Tache Tales for Movember

I’m doing Movember this year. For those of you who know all about it, please hurry along and make a donation here: http://mobro.co/mattgilbert1 For everyone else, here’s a bit more information: During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces in the UK and around the world.…

Here’s How Records Give You More Of What You Want

This sleeve is a genuine piece of history, and in it’s own stiff way everything it says about the value of LPs still holds true…

City of the Dredd

Far more than Judge Dredd – old stone face himself – it was Mega City 1 itself that caught my imagination as a child reading 2000AD.

There’s something both thrilling and terrifying in the idea of this vast, anarchic, dirty, urban sprawl, that’s the size of a state.

The not so secret garden

Grand plans and remodelling on a citywide scale never seem to have worked in London. It doesn’t possess the triumphant avenues, boulevards and grid layouts of other major world cities.

This means that some of its most interesting spaces: old churches, museums, wonderful little shops, pubs, statues, gardens and even whole streets sometimes take a little finding.

Paintings to jump into, faces to shun: Robert Hughes on Goya

Goya’s Pilgrimage to St. Isidore’s hermitage often comes to mind when I hear P J Harvey’s ‘The Last Living Rose’ A lyrical story of a similar kind of mad parade, this one though tottering through the faded glories of a lost, misremembered past, in a rotting, dank, defiantly not European England.

Still raucously Ridley: Dalston’s Street Market

In the last half century, visions of Dalston have been refracted in many different ways, from cult 1950s novels, 90s Yardie tales, angst-ridden millennial films to the clean windows of hip coffee shops. But for me, as an ex-resident, its pulsing, vital heart remains the stalls and sounds and crush of Ridley Road Market.