sketch | Sketches Of A Life

nigelhillpaul6

Nov 23, 20236 min read

OUTLANDISH KNIGHT: THE BYZANTINE LIFE OF STEVEN RUNCIMAN Minoo Dinshaw-Penguin 784pp

I once turned down an invitation to meet the subject of this biography (a girl or a riot; it all seems to blur into one these days) I...

nigelhillpaul6

Nov 22, 20234 min read

GODS AND MONSTERS

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that the rich are different to you and me, but he may as well have been talking about the famous when...

nigelhillpaul6

Nov 17, 20234 min read

A Very British Obsession With The Weather

I was born in that terrible year of nineteen-sixty-two after the build up to nuclear Armageddon, when my parents’ generation had decided...

nigelhillpaul6

Nov 2, 20233 min read

ON HERESY

I am orthodox, you are error strewn; they are deeply heretical. We have always striven for a way to mark ourselves as part of a...

nigelhillpaul6

Nov 2, 20233 min read

AUGUSTINE: CONVERSIONS AND CONFESSIONS Robin Lane Fox-Penguin 672pp

Augustine always reminded me of a clever little, provincial, mummy’s boy, who I could almost picture revelling in his Carthaginian accent...

nigelhillpaul6

Nov 2, 20235 min read

THE SPIDERS OF PHILIPPINE AIRWAYS

Back in those days of youth and vigour, when you could feel the earth tremble beneath your feet, I was a Dispatcher. To some, a giant...

nigelhillpaul6

Sep 15, 20233 min read

MABINOGI: MATTHEW FRANCIS Faber & Faber, 112pp, £14.99

'Here at the turn of a leaf a horseman is riding Through the space between one world And another.' I struggle in Welsh and am (I am told)...

nigelhillpaul6

Sep 13, 20232 min read

AIRPORT LIFE

I walk in out of the rain and shake myself like a dog in the porch before striding into the office flexing my hand and grimacing in pain...

nigelhillpaul6

Sep 13, 20235 min read

THE THIRSTY FOOL

Picture a film's opening credits, the panoramic birds-eye aerial sweep of a blisteringly hot late autumn day, with the sun beating out in...