A selection of recent essays and features:
Redundant Stable near Petworth, Jonathan Newdick, 2012
I've written forewords to two wonderful books, both responding to the history of particular places. Jonathan Newdick's Out of Time? is the culmination of a project in which Newdick studied the barns, stables and outhouses to be found within a few miles of his home in Petworth, Sussex. The book reproduces his exquisitely crafted, stylish and sometimes witty drawings of these forgotten buildings in their landscapes, and includes Newdick's reflections on the past and future of rural places.
Toller Fratrum by Judith Stainton (Little Toller Books, 2012) tells the history of a Dorset parish which was once home to the Knights Templar. Beautifully produced by Little Toller Books (a small publishing house which has done much to revive interest in the classics of nature-writing and local history), the book includes photographs of the mesmerising Norman carvings in the church of St Basil.
'Sutherland's Metamorphoses', an essay in Modern Art Oxford's catalogue Graham Sutherland: An Unfinished World. The exhibition is curated by Turner-shortlisted artist George Shaw and runs until 18 March.
'Wandering with Clouds: Literary Weather from Milton to Wordsworth', in Where We Fell To Earth: Writing for Peter Conrad, edited by Michael Dobson and James Woodall, 2011, pp. 322-336.This was a privately published tribute to mark Peter Conrad's retirement from Christ Church. Copies can be ordered here.
'A subject for all seasons: Painting the Charleston Barns', feature article in the Charleston Trust magazine Canvas, Autumn 2011. The barns at Charleston are soon to undergo major refurbishment to provide new education and exhibition spaces. My essay marks this turning-point by looking back at some of the many paintings of the barns by Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry.
Introduction to the catalogue for Poster King: Edward McKnight Kauffer, a major new exhibition at the Estorick Collection in London. Further details of the exhibition are here.
Pass, Measure, and Mark: reflections on our ways of marking time. An essay commissioned by Rachel Seaton for the Toast Travels website. The essay responds to themes in the TOAST Autumn/Winter collection.
'The Ground Beneath Our Feet', an essay on the rise of local history, New Statesman, 7 April 2011.
'The Road South', introductory essay in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition John Piper in Kent and Sussex, Mascalls Gallery March 2011.
'Top of the Crops', my feature on cabbages in art (!), Guardian 1 December 2010.
'Virginia Woolf Underground' in Woolf and the City, ed by Elizabeth Evans and Sarah Cornish, Clemson Digital Press, 2010. (Yes this really is about Woolf and the London Underground)
'Seaside Ceremonies: Coastal Rites in Twentieth-Century Art' in Modernism on Sea, ed by Alexandra Harris and Lara Feigel (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009)
'The Antimacassar Restored: Victorian Taste in the 1920s and '30s', in Strange Sisters, ed by Francesca Orestano and Francesca Frigerio (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009)
'Common Readers in Wartime', Virginia Woolf Bulletin, 31, 2009 (Julia Briggs Memorial Prize 2009)
Contributions to The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. by Dinah Birch (Oxford University Press, 2009)
'Almost fashionable Again: John Sell Cotman and the Second World War' in From Self to Shelf: The Artist Under Construction, ed by Sally Bayley and William May (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007)
