Paul Nash
Life Itself
One thing leads to another. How do you get from the Daily Poem in the Paris Review to a re-read…
The Road Ahead
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. Before the advent of motorways in the UK (first section of…
It’s December
It's December and the full onslaught of the cultural waterboarding of commercial Christmas is about to roll out. Before it…
Richard Aldington and Paul Nash: Images of War
Some authors are blessed with illustrators who enhance their work with the distinction of their own. So it was in…
Forgetfulness
Forgetfulness The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking…
My gaze is clear as a sunflower
Paul Nash's fascination with aerial bombardment led him to an ecstatic vision of “the sky blossoming with floating flowers”. This,…
Under the Radar: The Hedge Hoppers and the Hardest Day
After early mist the morning of Sunday August 18 1940 was bright with clear skies. It came to be known…
Tweet Tweet
Tweet Tweet There’s a blackbird in my mango tree and I think of Marley and singing songs of freedom I…
A Catalpa Tree On West Twelfth Street
Here again - for the summer solstice - are those Wittenham Clumps. By the early 1940s Nash’s was in declining…
To look at any thing
"My boy you should go in for nature." Sir William Richmond's advice to Paul Nash on reviewing some of his…
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Did you have a special place as a child? Perhaps somewhere secret and magical? A corner of a city park,…
Blackbird
Blackbirds are notorious for being able to mimic the sounds they hear as they hop about the celestial chimney pots…
Moonlight
Moonlight What time the meanest brick and stone Take on a beauty not their own, And past the flaw of…
A Wartime Education
Britain declared war on Germany just after U.A. Fanthorpe's birthday in 1939. She was ten. Living in Kent she was…
Song of the Dark Ages
Song of the Dark Ages We digged our trenches on the down Beside old barrows, and the wet White…