My December country column for The Guardian's Life And Style section.
Read more about my adventures with Henry the spaniel in my latest book, Talk To The Tail...
It seems there’s always a planned chapter I end up leaving out of one of my books - sometimes because I go cold on an idea but more often because it simply ends up not feeling like the right fit for that particular universe. I spent almost a decade intending
Cows were like, ‘What are you doing in our field?’ and I was like, ‘Well, it’s actually a public footpath. It says so over there, on a sign.’ And cows were like, ‘We don’t do signs.’ And I was like, ‘Well, if you want extra evidence, it’s
Apologies: I changed email sending domains a couple of weeks ago and I've since discovered that, due to a glitch in the changeover (hopefully all sorted now), only a smallish percentage of subscribers received my latest essay on Saturday. It's quite a hefty one which I
The full version of today's essay, which is about a hot dry summer, the books I've been reading during it, a little-known French film from 1996, and what we mistake for knowledge in 2026, is for paying subscribers only. If you'd like to