I was pleased to be invited back to the ABC studios a few days ago to chat with Richard Fidler as part of Conversations. The last time I was on the show was five years ago, just after the release of Explore Everything. My recent appearance was a great chance to talk...
As a follow-up to my last post, one of the things I really wanted to do with my USyd fellowship time was to read more. I asked my friends and colleagues to recommend to me a philosophy text (broadly defined) that was influential to them or that changed the way they...
There is no occupation so sweet as scholarship; scholarship is the means of making known to us, while still in this world, the infinity of matter, the immense grandeur of nature, the heavens, the lands and the seas. Scholarship has taught us piety, moderation,...
I recently participated in a two-day exhibition at the National Art School in Sydney. The exhibition was built around a long weekend spent walking part of the Bundian Way Aboriginal Trail, a 365km track which follows an ancient Aboriginal route from Mt Kosciuszko to...
Earlier this year I was invited to write the foreword to Antony Clayton's new book Secret Tunnels of England: Folklore and Fact. The invitation came from a talk we gave together in the Salon for the City series, which I'd highly recommend attending if you...
Since publishing my piece yesterday at The Conversation about the Conservatives’ war on foreign intellectuals in Britain, I have been flooded with phone calls and emails from people with their own stories of dealing with the constantly shifting goalposts set out by...
Academics doing battle with the Home Office. Photo via FotograFFF/www.shutterstock.com Earlier this year, the UK lost a great scholar through a “soft deportation” when Miwa Hirono voluntarily left the country after an extended legal battle with the Home Office that...
In the new issue of the Times Literary Supplement (20th March 2015), I have reviewed Mark Wallinger's new book Labyrinth: A Journey Through London's Underground. The piece was edited down a bit for print. Below is the unedited text for those interested. Louise Coysh,...
For anyone in Southampton (or interested in coming down!) on the 1st May I will be hosting Will Self in Southampton for the day. Will will be taking a walk with my 3rd year Experimental Geography students and sticking around for a reading from his new book Shark...
Over the past few weeks, I've been putting together a 3rd year undergraduate course here at the University of Southampton. This is my first time putting together an entire course and I'm pleased to say I've finally got a draft syllabus together. I'm now going to start...
I've always wanted to do the Croesor-Rhosydd Slate Mine through trip in Snowdonia. It's by many accounts one of the toughest mine explorations in Britain, requiring specialized equipment (like pulleys), solid SRT (Single Rope Technique) knowledge and a fair amount of...
The other day my good friend Darmon Richter stopped by Southampton to visit and told me he was headed to a Hobbit House on some farmland in Somerset. The back story was that a local farmer, in the 1980s, built a house for his sheep of stacked stone and, well, got...
Triarchy Press has just published Phil Smith's new book Alice's Derives in Devonshire. I wrote the forward and thought I might put it here for anyone interested, along with the raw text for ease of sharing. Foreword to Alice’s Dérives by Phil Smith Bradley L Garrett...
Here is my talk at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in the Sydney Opera House, August 2014. The talk is introduced by Ann Mossop and is followed by a...
My event schedule for 2014 is just about full - I'm listing upcoming events here for those interested in attending or disrupting them. I'm particularly interested in unsolicited collaborations. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/159252933"...
"We don't come fresh to even the most inaccessible of landscapes." -Robert Macfarlane [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/56343320" params="color=0066cc&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=false&show_user=false&show_reposts=false"...
I stopped by Battersea Power Station this afternoon after Harriet Hawkins texted me to say the developers had finally begun to chip at the chimneys. There was a sense of urgency in her text. When I got there, I saw why. On the side of the building, there was some new...
An invisible mountain is rising above the streets of the capital – and at over 1,800 metres, it is Britain’s highest peak... You are cordially invited to a party tomorrow night at Rough Trade East to celebrate the launch of a much-anticipated new title from Penned in...
“Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit.” -Guy Debord A few months back, I was invited to the Barbican to discuss my book Explore Everything with Will...
I lost a good friend yesterday. Matthew Power was on assignment for Men's Journal in Uganda accompanying Levison Wood as he attempted to walk the length of the Nile. Matt fell victim to heat exhaustion, which is almost impossible to treat in the field. While I’m happy...
