Top of the world
The New Yorker: Cartography is a form of control. “The Great Arc,” John Keay’s account of the surveying operation, argues that the undertaking was both a scientific triumph and an exercise in imperial authority. The Great Survey heralded a golden age of Himalayan exploration and exploitation, in which young European men, monocles firmly in place and teakettles securely lashed to their porters’ sacks, set out in the explorer-conqueror mold of Christopher Columbus and Captain Cook. The mountains became stages for mystical self-discovery and Nietzschean improvement.
BBC Radio on pandemic living
BBC Radio 3: Sunday Feature, May 24 2020 BBC Radio 3 asked six writers to record a chain letter in which we talked about our experiences living–and writing–during the pandemic. I wrote and spoke about a silver lining of calm and solitude; and also about the joys of my lockdown. BBC Radio 3 asked six […]