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A Walk across Paris, along the Meridian: 1
St-Ouen. Outside le Périph. A large silver ball has landed on a small traffic island. The sun blazes at its centre. Mirrors reflect; a curved mirror bends. And eventually deflects. Passing cars appear, swell, are gone, into St-Ouen. “St-Ouen Bienvenue.” Under Napoleon III, I see a marshal of France on horseback, sabre raised. Between the…
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Vincent, Anselm and I
In 1963 school student Anselm Kiefer received a grant to travel ‘In the footsteps of Van Gogh’, through the Netherlands, Belgium, Auvers and Paris, to Arles. With remarkable self-confidence the eighteen-year-old left his village near the Rhine for the first time, hitchhiked across countries occupied by Germany less than twenty years before, sleeping in barns…
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Return to La Balme …
Day 20, 19 June, 2015 : Albi to Coupiac, 56 miles. Return to the hills. Our village revealed. The carved stone buried. The wild boy reconsidered. Our house. The one-armed man. The Virgin’s veil. The threshing-machine. Camping by the lake. Pot au feu with the young couple. I wake early. Today I will be at…
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Diggers & Dreamers
Rural Languedoc. The South of France. Summer 1976. “There is another world, but it is in this one” – and the characters in this novel, in their different ways, mean to find it. Kris and Jane are an idealistic young couple who have bought La Balme, a run-down smallholding near Albi, city of the Cathars.…
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A F.light Tale
There was a time – in the past or in the future – when swans did not fly. They swam gracefully, they waddled awkwardly, but they did not fly. She was a bright and pretty cygnet, the best of the brood. How proud her parents were to watch her sport with the others, to see…
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The Divided Wood
“The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” A ruined splendour, a white wasteland … what has happened in the great wood?When his overbearing magnate father dies, Geoffrey believes that he has inherited everything and can at last come into his own. But the old man’s will contains a…
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When Vincent met Arthur : Van Gogh and Rimbaud meet in London.
Monday 30th March 1874, and a young man dressed smartly for the City, in a new top hat, is striding past Waterloo Station in London. He proudly shoots his cuffs to display the cuff-links sent by his beloved younger brother. In the evening he will write to thank him, while reminding him that, with his…
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Vincent and I: Auvers
Auvers-sur-Oise, 2006. ‘Vincent van Gogh, et Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,’ the patronne says firmly, and proudly, when I ask who are the men in the old photograph on the wall. My heart leaps – an unknown photograph of the mature Vincent? Only one is known, blurry and from the back. Vincent refused to be photographed, embarrassed…
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Vincent and I: Paris.
Vincent arrives in Paris in March 1886, ten years to the month after he had left in ignominy – on his birthday, oh these anniversaries! – having been sacked by Goupil’s. His younger brother, Theo, is now manager of a Goupil’s Paris gallery. And he comes as an artist. He arrives from Antwerp without telling…
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Vincent and I: Nuenen.
From age 15, a dozen times, Vincent leaves the family home, with a plan and full of optimism, and within a year he is back, a broken failure. I’ve followed him to each place. To London to work in his uncle’s art gallery, Ramsgate to be a teacher, Isleworth to preach, Dordrecht to work in…
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