Author Archives: Mark Rossiter

Leipzig

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Sunday lunchtime, grey sky, almost no-one in the streets. a young nutter sat on the pavement, cheerfully declaiming. An entire Russian brass band busking, and all the other buskers within earshot playing along; later, a six-piece English rock band with … Continue reading →

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the Pharaoh’s fist

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

a chill Sudanese lion from the Pharaonic period, in the British Museum: but check out this Pharaoh’s fist, from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, a little over 3000 years ago: and if you didn’t much fancy being subject to that, your … Continue reading →

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home soil

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

I landed in London at 6 in the morning. People are really friendly. Everything moves slowly, and there seems so much space and time between objects. Almost nobody employed in London, apart from the guys with the green fluorescent waistcoats … Continue reading →

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not quite fever pitch

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Today is Cup Final day, Ian’s first: Chelsea v Liverpool. He is 19 days younger than I was when I watched my first, in 1971: Liverpool 1 Arsenal 2, with Steve Heighway, in flaming red, scoring from near the corner … Continue reading →

Posted in daddymummybabyblog, older, random amnesia | 6 Comments

the face I deserve

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

“By the time a man is 50 he has the face he deserves.” If you google that, it comes up that George Orwell wrote it; but nowhere does it say exactly where, chapter and verse. So was it him? Almost … Continue reading →

Posted in daddymummybabyblog, older, peak and decline | 8 Comments

The American Future

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

A curious title for what is a work of thematic history about America interspersed with passages of personal reminiscence, but Simon Schama’s book was written during the 2008 election, those days of surging hope when it seemed the US might … Continue reading →

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Storms of My Grandchildren

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

This first book by James Hansen, the dean of American climate scientists and the man who introduced a mass audience to the concept of “global warming” in a Congressional hearing nearly a quarter of a century ago, was published right … Continue reading →

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Byzantium by bus

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

And so, 30 years after I first conceived the ambition while turning right at Thessaloniki, I came not sailing but on a highway bus (aware, always, of the tyre-tracks of history) to Istanbul-Constantinople-Byzantium. The rain had cleared and we descended … Continue reading →

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mosque heaven: Edirne

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

From Samothraki I took the ferry before dawn back to Alexandroupoli, arriving in brilliant, freezing sunshine. After 20 minutes, the bus to Orestiada turned inland into thick fog, passing through small towns among roads lined with white single-storey Thracian cottages … Continue reading →

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The God Delusion

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

I suppose how you receive Richard Dawkins might depend on where you start from. A lot of his points about the folly of religious thinking in this book seem perfectly reasonable, if not unarguable, to the point where it almost … Continue reading →

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