Places to visit

Spent last weekend at Camp Bestival in Dorset, where I was giving a talk. It's a great little festival, and the sun stayed out. One of the musical highlights was the Imagined Village, who I've mentioned here before: a reinvention of the English folk music tradition with any number of strangely contemporary influences. Well worth a listen if you've not come across them.

In the last few weeks I've also come across a couple of new things which are worth exploring. Firstly, this blog - We English - is a real panoply of all things English, from any number of angles. it also has some great links and is well worth exploring.

Secondly, Albion magazine is similarly eclectic, and contains some thought-provoking stuff about the future of England. And I don't just say so because they've just interviewed me. Honestly.

More soon.

Return of the Native

Hello again. I'm back.

All sorts of things have been happening in my absence, most notably the writing of God knows how many articles. The book seems to have made commissioning editors look at me afresh, so that has to be a good thing (at least for me). I'll be updating my website in the next few hours, so it will all be there, and a fair bit of it relates to the themes of the book, not least this - on the 'English question' - and this - on the erosion of freedom in England.

I'm also restarting my other blog which will, like this, get up to speed intermittently over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here are a couple of other good local campaigns from around England that I have been alerted to: the campaign to stop a bypass through an ancient hillside (sigh; I have deja vu); and the effort of some locals in Brighton to fight off a new Starbucks. More power to their elbows.