I first started keeping a journal in 1981, when I had the good fortune to be awarded a Harper-Wood Travelling Studentship for English Poetry and Literature by St. John’s College, Cambridge.  I spent a year travelling through western Europe, equipped with a notebook, a camera, a guitar and a typewriter.  In the intervening years, the typewriter has been replaced by a laptop, and most of my traveling is now on business; but the notebook, the camera and the guitar are still my constant companions.

Much of the journal which I have kept over the years is private in nature and intent, but there are many passages which are addressed to the general reader.  I hope that the passages reproduced here may be of interest.

18th October 1983 - Dickens and Shakespeare: stooping to examine a pebble

8th November 1983 - Feeding seagulls in Heidelberg

28th December 1983 - The endearing qualities of Goethe

30th December 1983 - On butchery and Goya

3rd - 5th January 1984 - Don't look now in Venice

5th January 1984 - Cafés and cemeteries

27th March 1984 - A hero of the imagination versus a process of the imagination

27th June 1984 - Eroticism in the Victorian novel

27th October 1984 - Literary Virgins

28th November 1984 - The Prophecy of The Secret Agent