Wilko Johnson, 1947-2022

Wilko Johnson CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD remembers the first time he met Dr. Feelgood’s ace guitarist It’s a strange thing about biography. No matter how many facts are told, how many details are given or lists are made, the essential thing all too often resists telling. To say that so and so was born here, that he…

Sinfonia sparkle for austerity December

An American in Paris STUART MILLSON is transported to a warmer sound-world Any sense of malaise, austerity or winter gloom in London was dispelled for two hours (for those fortunate to be in attendance) by the Sinfonia of London’s 2nd December performance of Walton, Ravel, Dutilleux and Gershwin at the Barbican. Much praised by the…

Diary of an organ-playing nobody

Credit: Shutterstock R. J. STOVE reflects on life as an antipodean performer on the King of Instruments ‘“What?”, said [piano manufacturer] Herr Stein. “A man like you …  wants to play on an instrument which has no sweetness, no expression, no piano, no forte, but is always the same?” “That does not matter,” I replied.…

Five poems by J. M. Jordan

J. M. JORDAN recently began writing again after a twenty-year hiatus. He is a Georgia (US) native, a Virginia resident, and a homicide detective by profession. His poems have appeared in Arion: A Journal of Classics and the Humanities, The Chattahoochee Review, Chronicles, Image Journal, Louisiana Literature, The Potomac Review and elsewhere.   The Golden Key I He…

The forgotten Levels

FAITH MOULIN helped rewild an overlooked corner of Somerset My part of Somerset hides its age well.  When the Romans came to Yatton and Congresbury, they inherited an Iron Age salt-panning industry, set up the first systematic drainage system, and established an industrial-scale pottery at Congresbury, using the estuarine clay. A Roman temple has been…