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Reportage

‘It was like a ten-year stag party’

Paul Murray helps us understand the crash of the Celtic Tiger
'Maths and numbers and abstraction, these all seem like very un-Irish things; but imagining other worlds, turning reality into a hall of mirrors, these are things we are very good at.'

Phantoms Over Paris

Ali Smith in the city of light
'It’s the New York Herald Tribune, Jean Seberg’s voice in the middle of traffic. It’s Romaine Bohringer and Elsa Zylberstein lolling on a bench at the top of a city hill, art and hope and tragedy ahead of them.'

Flight South

Roger Deakin follows the swallows
'Everything about swallows says ‘South’. They are a shiny, metallic, gregarious, nomadic tribe, decked in magenta and ravishing deep blues.'

On Roydon Fen

Roger Deakin takes a wander
'This is a classic squatters’ landscape, and all the better for it. I always feel immediately at home in such makeshift places. Even the little palings have a Dickensian sort of attraction.'

The Latter-Day Thoreau

Robert Macfarlane recalls his friend Roger Deakin
'Walnut Tree Farm, the house he eventually completed, and in which he died in August, 2006, is made largely of wood. It is as close to a living thing as a building can be.'

Ancient Trees, Ancient Knowledge

Jay Griffiths on the wisdom of forests
'For indigenous people everywhere, nature is an enlargement of your mind and your sense of kin – your social mind. Trees have long been associated with knowledge.'

We Do Not Use The Word Lightly

Richard Reynolds, guerrilla gardener, faces the Fuzz
For years I have been an illicit cultivator of neglected patches of public land. I ‘fight the filth with forks and flowers’ and until now had never been confronted with the choice between arrest and retreat.

I Leap Over The Wall

Looking back to 1949 with Monica Baldwin
'I said firmly, "Freda, I can’t possibly go out in these. They make my legs look naked." She smiled patiently.'

From Gustave Flaubert to Louise Colet

One wretched master seeking guidance
'I am hideously worried, mortally depressed. My accursed Bovary is harrying me and driving me mad. I can do nothing about it.'

The Agony Uncle – Part 1

Alain de Botton is here to help you
'I am a nervous public speaker and next month I have to address a meeting of top business managers. Do you have any advice on how I might keep calm on stage?'