The author was part of the successful campaign to establish a marine reserve in Lyme Bay. The first such protected area in English waters, it has permanently closed sixty square miles of seabed to the scallop-dredgers. This book, based on a talk Morpurgo gave recently, is part memoir, part updated guide to the West Country’s […]
How to be Reconciled with an Oil-Spill
This is the full text of a piece about the Prestige Disaster in the context of our oil-dependency and the build-up to war in Iraq. An edited version of this piece was printed in the March 2003 issue of the New Internationalist.
Londons of the Mind (Dissident Editions)
The second and longest of the three texts posted here includes the account of a pilgrimage to an underground mosque in the deserts of southern Kazakhstan, undertaken quite by chance on July 7th 2005, the day of the London Bombings. Either side of it is an article about EU enlargement and the piece I was actually in Kazakhstan to write. I […]
With Mrs Dalloway in Ukraine (Dissident Editions)
The ship’s cook on the night-train south was travelling home after four months at sea with an enormous maroon suitcase full of presents…
How Not to do an MA on George Orwell
Any English—speaker to whom Vaclav Havel has mattered owes a debt they’re probably unaware of to Paul Wilson. His work as the Czech writer’s translator began thirty years ago but I discover, over a cup of coffee off Russell Square, that he first came to London from his native Canada ten years before that, to […]
Lady Chatterley’s Defendant – London Magazine & Three Monkeys Online
An article written about Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin books, originally published in London Magazine, and subsequently in the online current affairs/arts magazine Three Monkeys Online For the full article, click here. Brief extract below: Even those closest to Allen Lane could never work out how many parts missionary he was to how many […]
How Thomas Hardy Expressed His Doubt featured by the Woodland Trust
The Woodland Trust have featured How Thomas Hardy Expressed His Doubt on their website The Woodland Trust is the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity, and you can find a range of useful articles on their site here http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/
Global Warming and the King’s Arms pub – The New Internationalist
In this essay for the New Internationalist, Horatio argues that Environmentalists may be missing out a vital part of the argument Brief excerpt: In the main bar of the King’s Arms a glass panel has been placed over one section of wall to display its internal structure. It is of ‘wattle and daub’ – nothing […]
The Bay of Napoli – The New Internationalist
An article inspired by the environmental disaster that occured when The Napoli ran aground on Branscombe Beach in the South West of England. It was published in the New Internationalist in February 2007. Brief excerpt: There was, briefly, something for everybody on Branscombe Beach. The Napoli, a container-ship out of Antwerp bound for Portugal and […]