RLB’s weekly recommendations
For about a hundred days between May and August our skies are blessed with the soaring acrobatics displays of swifts. They stay long enough to rear their chicks then head back south to Africa. They are the fastest of birds in level flight and can reach speeds of over 100 kph – in fact they … Continue reading Book of the Week, August 11th 2018
It is the summertime of 1983 and a young boy, holidaying with cousins on a farm outside Coggeshall, discovers a body beside the railway line. DI Nick Lowry is sent out from Colchester to investigate but discovers not one but two bodies. In the kitchen at Fox Farm lies famous academic and TV historian, Christopher … Continue reading Book of the Week, August 4th 2018
In 1584 Elizabeth I issued a charter containing a ‘grant to the town of Colchester for the erection of a Free Grammar School’. In practice this formalised the status of an already existing school – in fact there are documents confirming the existence of a school in Colchester dating back to 1206 and possibly earlier. … Continue reading Book of the Week, July 28th 2018
The River Stour Festival runs events and exhibitions throughout the year. Just published is a small anthology celebrating the river, its culture, people and surrounding landscape. An essay by John Thorne examines how John Constable developed his gloriously accurate portrayal of clouds and skies by meticulous observation and recording of weather conditions as he sketched … Continue reading Book of the Week, 21st July 2018
Michael Ondaatje has this week been honoured with the ‘Golden Booker’ for his prize winning 1992 novel ‘The English Patient’. And just released is his first new novel for 7 years. The cover is a blurred and hazy beach scene and the story seems to take place amid mist, shadows and uncertainty. It begins in … Continue reading Book of the Week, July 14th 2018
We regulate our lives by time. The watch on our wrist marks our daily routines. Time is something to be saved or spent; it can fly by or appear to stand still. Our common understanding is of time flowing from a past now fixed to a future open to possibility. But developments in physics over … Continue reading Book of the Week, July 6th 2018