Canterbury tales

Recent adventures, some news, a little music ...

1) In Canterbury during the heatwave, I found it a great relief to spend time in the cool Cathedral, especially down in the crypt where the stone monsters lurk. Old churches are great in hot weather. It would be good, I think, if there could be some arrangement by which St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey were free to enter during periods of extreme heat. That would be such a mercy for Londoners and visitors.

The reason I was in Canterbury was to write about the Cathedral and about pilgrimage. That will be the focus of a story for The Guardian, but also part of a bigger project that I’m looking forward to telling you about at some point. I felt very tired and rather low after finishing Upon A White Horse, but am now reenergised and happy to be working hard again. This is perhaps an obvious thing for a writer to say, but I just really enjoy writing sentences, you know?

Anyway, with all that in mind, I’m going to start trying to give occasional updates on here, so that those who are interested in my work can keep up with any news.

2) I have two book festival appearances coming up. The first is at Govan Old Church in Glasgow on Saturday July 4 at 2pm. Tickets are free but need to be booked, which you can do here. I’m chuffed to be appearing at Govan Old. It’s among my favourite places; one that I’ve written about in a previous Substack post. So please do come and see the wonders of the church and consider my event a bonus.

I’ll also be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Monday 24 August at 2pm. Tickets can be booked here. The event will be chaired by Caroline Eden, a writer on food, travel and culture whose work I admire. Her excellent book Black Sea has a recipe for Walnut Candies, inspired by something she ate in Sinop, Türkiye. They are beyond delicious. It’s an honour to be asked to appear at Edinburgh. It is almost certain to be the last event I do for Upon A White Horse, so I hope you can come and be part of that.

3) While writing Upon A White Horse, one of the albums I listened to a lot was Tresor by Gwenno. The atmosphere of her music is part of the feel of the book, I think. It was a thrill, therefore, to hear her review my book on Rhys Mwyn’s show on BBC Radio Cymru. I’m not a Welsh speaker, so I couldn’t follow it, but the link is here. I’m grateful to Rhys Mwyn – broadcaster, archaeologist, music legend – for his support. Diolch, Rhys.

Here’s Gwenno’s ‘An Stevel Nowydh’. The video was filmed at Bryn Celli Ddu, a wonderful prehistoric site on Ynys Môn.

4) Travelling back to Glasgow from Canterbury was … interesting. The heat had buckled the rails between Canterbury and London, which meant I had to catch a later train from Euston. It was so hot on board that water from the hard-pressed air-conditioning started to leak through the ceiling on to passengers, including me. This was invigorating in a way, but did feel like the start of a disaster movie. Happily, it turned out that my friend Stephen Phelan was on board, heading to Glasgow to see Metallica at Hampden, so we sat together and caught up. Stephen lives in Spain and recently wrote a fantastic piece about the prehistoric cave art of the Basque Country, which you can read here. Sitting across from us, I was cheered to notice, was the pollster/political scientist/cult hero Sir John Curtice. I gave him my last easy peeler.