On Saturday, I went to visit my friend Julian at his allotment. It’s an unpromising scrap of South London tucked in behind a pub; a chaotic patchwork of plots nestling alongside the waterworks in the shadow of the prison. We sat for a couple of hours by Julian’s shed, hemmed in by peonies and ranunculus, …
I am not a patient man. But I am quite capable of mistaking idleness for patience. It’s a clever trick. The mark of my last year has often been to do nothing and to think I’m patiently biding my time whereas in fact, I’m just impatiently and fretfully getting nothing done, hoping things will get …
The future troubles me. I worry about all sorts of stuff. These are not global concerns. I’m good with the great shifts of human and planetary history. No. With me, it’s the little things. When I was waiting for my children to be born, I fretted over what we would call them, about whether they’d …
The Census for England and Wales on Sunday was the first to record that my children are now all technically adults. This was the third time they’ve appeared in the census (and my sixth), each one a momentary snapshot of our individual and collective lives: who we are, what we are, where we are, where …
I like to think I know my friends, and what to expect from them: not much from Jack, who lives a mile away, but extreme affection from Steve, who lives in Australia. But occasionally, they surprise me. Last week, a friend of mine found an old piece of broken pottery in a rabbit hole and, …
Once upon a time, I went to watch my son Silas play lacrosse. Afterwards, as I stopped to put on a jumper, I took off my glasses and put them on the roof of the car. Now driving is pretty much the only thing I can do without glasses. So, I drove. I remembered, of …
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I went out for dinner in Paris. I was in high spirits. Although it was a miserable, chilly, February evening, I was on holiday, I’d found free parking and to top it all, Nelson Mandela had just been released from prison (yes, this really was …
Professors Abigail Williams and Adam Smyth of the Oxford English Faculty teach a course to third year undergraduates called Texts in Motion, about the material forms of books and the ways they circulate. Some years ago, they asked me to gather some material for a class in the Museum to help their students think about …
At the weekend I washed the bedlinen. In other, less exciting news we left the European Union and the nation prepared for yet another lockdown. But as for me, I washed the bedlinen. It was only when I took the sheet and duvet cover out of the machine, though, that I realised that, worn soft …
This is a story about casts. Plaster of Paris replicas of sculpture. And it is a story about three cast collections. It's also a story that involves a certain amount of straight talking about a gentleman’s unmentionables. You have been warned. Now, the cast gallery at the Ashmolean is one of the most interesting places …