Tag: books
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Teignmouth Harbour
More pictures from Teignmouth, 23 March 2010. Looking from New Quay across to the Fish Quay, with Shaldon Bridge and the sheds of Teignmouth Docks visible in the background. New Quay from Back Beach. The quay was constructed in 1820 by George Templer to facilitate the shipping of Dartmoor granite from Haytor. The building under…
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The salting sun
Anybody searching Teignmouth for the ghost of John Keats is following a well-trodden path. Charles Causley wrote a poem inspired by his visit in the 1950s: Keats at Teignmouth Spring, 1818 By the wild sea-wall I wandered Blinded by the salting sun, While the sulky Channel thundered Like an old Trafalgar gun. And I watched…
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Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894). Portrait by Girolamo Nerli, 1892. * * * * * I’ve recently finished reading Claire Harman’s thoughtful and affectionate biography of Robert Louis Stevenson. He seems to have been an unusually likeable person as writers go, though perhaps best appreciated at a distance. As a child I found Treasure…
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Foreign Land
‘Whenever George thought of the sea, it seemed to him a kindly place mainly because he imagined himself floating away on it leaving his unbuoyant father stranded on the beach. On summer holidays, first in Dawlish, then in Ilfracombe, Mr Grey led his family to this dangerous element like Moses going at the head of…
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Sun god
On Sunday morning I couldn’t sleep – I got up to watch the sunrise and decided to go for a walk after breakfast. I left the house before 9 o’clock and went very quietly down to the park. Tom told me on Friday that a buzzard roosts in the tree on the island – I’ve…
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Little red flames
Hazel catkins (Corylus avellana) 5 March 2009 All rights reserved * * * * * She was a strange figure in the class-room, wearing a large, old cloak of greenish cloth, on which was a raised pattern of dull gold. The high collar, and the inside of the cloak, was lined with dark fur. Beneath…