That's How The Light Gets In – Books, exhibitions, films, music, ...

The poet Mary Oliver, who has died at the age of 83, wrote some of the poems I cherish most. Born in 1935 in a small Ohio town, she often found escape from a hard childhood and an abusive father by walking in the woods. “It was a very bad childhood for...

Let’s sing for old December. Thea Gilmore’s 2009 album, Strange Communion – one of the best ‘Christmas’ albums ever – has been reissued this month in an expanded form. Christmas is in quote marks there because Strange Communion is not a conventional...

In the summer of 1983 we were holed up in a cottage in the rolling Shropshire hills just outside Clun. Walking along a woodland track one evening, we encountered a badger, a meeting so rare and magical that the memory of it - the subject of an earlier...

After seeing Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita once again last night at the Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room, and to celebrate an outstanding concert, here’s a repost that records the first time we saw the duo – in October 2014. ‘The harp and the kora appear...