coast
Write-walking, notebooks, jackdaws, the language of the countryside and zombie snakes
My latest Guardian column.
Tom Cox
Tom Cox's books include Villager, 1983, the Sunday Times top ten bestseller The Good, The Bad And The Furry, the Wainwright Prize-longlisted 21st-Century Yokel & Help The Witch, which won a Shirley Jackson Horror Writing award. He lives in Devon.
american fiction
The End Of Vandalism by Tom Drury
In Britain, at the very least, Tom Drury might just be modern America’s last great lost living novelist: an astute chronicler of the shrugging, unintentionally hilarious exchanges that go on in small towns. If you’ve enjoyed the fiction of Richard Russo or Annie Proulx and, like me, you
beachcombing
If you think I'm the kind of person who'd go on a walk and find some seaweed resembling a zombie snake and fail to adopt it, you are mistaken
countryside
Recent Sheep Photos I Have Taken
The reason this sheep I met on a walk the other week on Dartmoor looks sceptical is because I'd just told it that it was the best sheep of all time. I shall name this photograph I took on my walk yesterday 'The Easily Offended Sheep And
countryside
Six Conversations I've Had About Devon History With A Small Poodle
Me: "The road is beginning to get very steep now, as we get closer to the moor. You'll notice that it's a very acidic environment up there on the highest points, which has made farming impossible on the majority of the terrain for the last
animals
Helping to drift the ponies of Dartmoor
My February 2015 column for The Guardian's Life And Style section.
ale
On wassailing and the magic of Devon's hills
My January 2015 column for The Guardian's Life And Style section.
ace records
My Ace Records Top Ten
The excellent Ace Records recently invited me to to pick my top ten songs on their label. This is what I wrote about them.
cats
My Cat For Your Firewood: A Fair Exchange?
A column for The Guardian
coast
22 Things I Have Learned About Devon
It will soon be a year since I moved to Devon. I am still a novice Devonian, but I am falling more and more in love with the place, and have learned a few things about it during that time. Here are some of the main ones: 1. No sight
countryside
My Weird Animal Rescue Story
I was walking on Dartmoor today and noticed a pony roll over on his back, about forty yards from the path I was on, above Dartmeet, not far from Yar Tor. "Hello!" I said to him, in the fake posh voice I always use when speaking to ponies
book recommendations
A Modern Book And An Old Record
Sara Maitland - Gossip From The Forest (Granta, 2013)I'm not convinced the travel aspect of Maitland's book (in which she visits one of her favourite bits of British forest every month for a year and discusses the symbiotic relationship of humans and woodland) and the more