Richard D North.

Jonathan Meades is a vital figure, a sort of a Christopher Hitchens for architecture, with a dash of Ian Nairn, but considerable wallops of Suggsy, and a undertone of some late 18th Century person (wonderful to think it might be JM's admired Burke himself). I very much approve his appreciation of Brutalism, though I would go further and wider.... Read more...

BBC R4 had a great In Our Time episode last week. It discussed Social Darwinism and taught me (I fear for the first time) to wonder which came first: the sociology, as in social, or the biology, as in Darwinism? Put it another way: who was the precursor of whom? Who got to evolution - and got to its messages - first? Was it our obvious hero Charles Darwin, or the famous old villain, Herbert Spencer? Naturally, I was rooting for Spencer.... Read more...

There was a fascinating vignette of modern government when the former head of GCHQ (the government’s listening post), Sir David Omand, was quizzed by Keith Vaz, the chairman of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee during on a session on counter-terrorism. (The Home Affairs Committee, 11 February 2014.) Sir David argued - rightly, and counter-intuitively - that character was a better guarantee of probity than transparency. Well, there was more to his argument than that... Read more...

I am working on portraits of various modern warriors, starting with memoirs by people who fought in WW1 or WW2, or - importantly - both. Two such strike me as breath-taking. They are accounts of the young pilots of the beginning of WW2. Read more...

I am fond of the Selsey "Wave" and its three-dimensional homage to the great 19th Century print by Hokusai... Read more...

I have a soft spot for the absurd Top Gear and its "star in a cheap car" and its supercar features. But above all I like the Flashmanism of some of the team's heroics. Very galling, then, to watch their absurd treatment of  a visit to Chernobyl. Read more...

It's 30 years since I spent serious time researching the Somerset Levels and its precarious balance between farming and wildlife, which of course hinges on how much flooding to allow. That was for my book, Wild Britain. Where are we now? Read more...

I had a brief outing on the BBC's Birmingham and Midlands local radio station, WM. Is the present flooding caused by manmade global warming, they asked? They had just trailed the Met Office's Julia Slingo as saying that climate change had caused the storms (though actually her remarks, though a little incautious, were fairly nuanced). Anyway, I was extremely cautious.... Read more...

Poetry

A word and a thought,
old friends,
but caught in stale marriages,
meet and fall in love.… Read more...

Yes, it's a doubtful four stars - a tentative, deniable accolade. But there was lots to like about this movie... Read more...