Travel
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Yeats’s Tower and Coole Park
So having carried Yeats’s words about in my head for 40 years, it was amazing to finally get to look at Thoor Ballylee, a one time home of the poet, and a place which had an enormously powerful symbolic presence in his mind and his poetry. I went there with Lorraine, my wife, and our…
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Rattling locked doors
I’m having a bit of a fanboy moment. I am off next weekend to Eire, and I hope to have a look at Thoor Ballylee where my all time poetic hero, W.B.Yeats, once lived. Although it is out of season and The Tower is not open to the public I hope at least to be…
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Peter Caton’s Chad photos
Some of Peter Caton’s photograph from our trip to Chad are here on the Guardian Online. Pete’s shot of many of the people of the the village meeting under a good tree is typical of his excellent work. For the people he captures here, there is plenty to discuss: an appalling drought, extreme hunger that threatens the…
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Filming in the centre of Chad
As an Africa newbie, a visit to Chad was in at the deep end. Chad is a landlocked country unappetisingly described by Wikipedia as the ‘dead heart of Africa’. It proved a difficult place to gain entry to. Despite having the right papers, as soon as our team of five landed we were shepherded from…
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Preparations for Chad
Planning now well advanced for the trip to Chad in two weeks. For me this has already meant several jabs, and the final one, yellow fever, will be done privately next week. I’ve also had to buy some lightweight, UV and mosquito-resistant clothes and urgently renew my passport. Africa, then. I have never been there…
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Bram Stoker and the Genius Loci of Whitby Abbey
As a teenager I went through a Clark Ashton Smith phase. Smith wrote fantasy horror stories like his friend H.P. Lovecraft and employed an ornate vocabulary. Being foxed by his vocabulary forced me to learn the meaning of words such as ‘atavistic’ and ‘gibbous’. One of his collections was called Genius Loci and other tales. I…
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The treasures of Greek poetry
Just back from a couple of weeks in Thassos, the northernmost Greek island of the Aegean, and Kavala on the mainland. While Lorraine and I did lots of site-seeing, notably at the site of Phillipi a short drive from Kavala, and also, rather bravely, going on a jeep safari to the top of Mount Ipsarion on the green…
Peter Kenny: a writer's notebook 