I am an art historian by profession and I work in a museum. The past is my business. I’m supposed to know something about it and to be able to teach about it. If I had one, therefore, the temptation to use a time machine would be very great indeed. Imagine the thrill of being …
There are three boys in my family and they like to climb, so quite often we head for an indoor wall near us to go bouldering. Bouldering is climbing without ropes, solving technical problems at no great height and with comforting safety mats in case of a fall. However, even though the walls aren't that …
Every so often, I have to travel for work, to teach or do some research. It’s great. I love travelling and I’m aware of the huge privilege it is to see new things and places, to talk to new people. The part of travelling I relish least, though, is the preparation. I stress about making …
I am constantly being showered with gifts. Every website I visit, every link I click on, every restaurant I eat at wants to offer me something: exclusive access, free postage, free pizza. Even if I just want yoghurt I’m told I can have some as a gift if I’ll only buy twice as much as …
I started running this year. Like every bloke of a certain age I have been, to put it in polite terms, ‘thickening’ around the middle and I wanted to arrest the spread, so I began pounding the streets of South London every other day or so. It hasn’t been a dramatic or life-transforming epiphany. I …
‘A good and virtuous nature may recoil in an imperial charge’ Macbeth IV.iii, 18-19. It’s easy to be critical of people in leadership. We’ve all had a boss we can’t stand, an insufferable manager or a selfish captain. We are endlessly confronted in the news by politicians who have been caught fiddling their expenses or …
My Father was a good cricketer in his day. Every weekend, I’d go and watch him play for our local club, hoping I’d be good enough to join him one day. Sadly, my brother got the sports genes. The very first time my Mother saw him in action, before they were married, Dad took a …
My job is a long way from my home. I consequently spend far too much of my time on public transport. More to the point, I spend far too much of my time on public transport in the dark. Two and a half hours travel at either end of the working day means that for …
I used to be in a band. It was the greatest fun it is possible to have and the friends I played with are still among my closest, 30 years later. There’s nothing quite like live music, making it or hearing it. Recently, I saw Wara - a London based band whose members are all …
About four hundred years ago, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei was starting to understand, along with others throughout Europe, something of the way the universe works. The earth, it seemed, was not at its centre, but travelled around the sun, along with the other planets. These new discoveries didn't sit well with the church, which …