Lake Superior Hills, 1925, by Lawren Harris.

Having seen persons of importance being insufferable in the simple exchanges of life, good to share a flight with Christine Lagarde, and team, this evening from Bangkok and see simple gracious normality! And she writes notes in a notebook with a real pen!!! 😂

Happy anniversary to one of the greats -poet, novelist and, I think, one of the great masters of the short story: George Mackay Brown!

Every so often check in on ‘recent’ Buber related publications - and on this occasion struck gold. Mendes-Flohr was the editor of the Complete Works and this is a treasury of multiple perspectives. I wish we had a better descriptor for Buber describing him as a ‘philosopher’ can be misleading. The French ‘penseur’ might be simpler and better. His professional post at the Hebrew University was in sociology but the running joke was that his students would have to learn their actual sociology elsewhere!

When Walpole died (too early) he was an immensely popular writer whose star has now faded. These stories are excellent: the touch of the macabre is accompanied by great, if saddening, psychological insight, narrative drive and descriptive power.

I enjoy the fact that Blackwood was virtually the first person broadcast on BBC TV. A brilliant short story writer sadly genre pigeoned. Metaphysically informed and psychologically acute. ncolloff.blogspot.com/2025/1…

As my Jesuit philosophy tutor would remind us, you cannot read an ethics out of the Bible as if it were a self-help manual (or one for self-justification one). The Bible alone cannot decide whether capital punishment is right or wrong. Period.

Another writer, Frank Waters, who deserves a wider reputation than he has, he wrote a series of fine novels whose characters sit on multiple societal edges, and one, The Man Who Killed the Deer, is a minor masterpiece. ncolloff.blogspot.com/2018/1…

And tomorrow, possibly a different arrangement ...and with Eckhart indicative (The Oliver Davies selection was not the one encountered first) and Kathleen's Blake and the New Age was the first of hers I read that was to blossom into a long-lasting friendship.😄

Huxley’s profound meditation on the consequences when theology, politics and nationalism mix (ironically in a person of profound personal spirituality). ncolloff.blogspot.com/2015/0…

A remarkable novel that renders the Swedish seer Swedenborg's vision of the afterlife into this compelling story of an egotistical downfall. ncolloff.blogspot.com/2020/0…

Rebel cheese making in the Italian Alps theguardian.com/artanddesign…

Newly arrived in Switzerland, and off for a trip to Denmark as my reading. @aonghasphadraig latest novel, much awaited ...

My spirit does not especially chime with Philip Larkin, but I fully agree with his high assessment of Hardy the poet. No mean feat to be a great 19th-century novelist and a great 20th-century poet ...