Category Archives: Books

Below the Salt – Steeleye Span

First of all – what a great album cover. The frisky play on being peasants well and truly ‘below the salt’ is riotously captured by the band playing up to the camera. I cannot help thinking they are also saying to the traditionalists that actually we do not care what you think but this is our version of traditional folk. This album captures all that is wonderful about these old songs but does so in a way that is more palatable, shall we say, for the non-devotee of traditional folk. This album will never, can never date. The songs are so old anyway at the time of recording that another couple of hundred years will not age them.

Spring in Cornwall 2025 – Endless Sun

The sun has shone on England this spring and these photos are from a week of endless sun in Cornwall. The flowers are out in abundance and the coastline is a stunning azure blue. A stunning place to be in this exceptional weather. Please enjoy the photography and my writing.

Paul Simon – Paul Simon

Paul Simon released his second solo album in early 1972, having spent two years moving forward from the breakup of his partnership with Art Garfunkel. Looking back some fifty years from the release of this album you can see the template for Simon’s love of using varying styles of music gathered from all over the world. There is a sense of release from the constraints of working as a duo in this work. It is intensely personal, as is most of Simon’s writing. The album represents a crossroads for him but one that he negotiates with a fresh impetus to his writing, but most especially to his musicality. This has a feel of a great starting album from an exciting new artist, one not fully developed, but one of exceptional promise of what is to come. http://www.nealatherton.com

Explore Beaune: The Heart of Burgundy Wine Culture

Beaune is quite the centre of Burgundian culture. Having seen the striking tiles on the roofs in Aloxe Corton on our way we were fascinated by the rooftops of the walled town of Beaune, culminating in the magnificent Hôtel-Dieu (Hospices de Beaune). Beaune is a place that revels in its medieval atmosphere and the history contained in the cobbled streets. In many ways it the centre of this wine-producing region and here in Beaune you can indulge in tasting wine from every village and domain of the surrounding countryside.

John Thomas Atherton – Surviving the Tragedy of War

I recall as a child a photo of a man in uniform, enclosed in a plastic art deco frame on the sideboard at my grandparents’ house. It never occurred to me that it was my grandfather, despite seeing it on every visit. Later I assumed it was his brother Alan who we will meet shortly. It was only decades later, after my father died, that I found this photo in my father’s possessions. Studying it with more interest than the young child I was back then, I could discover from the uniform the role my grandfather played in WW2. Let us see.

Fairport Convention – Unhalfbricking

I appreciate Liege and Lief is considered the most important album Fairport produced but Unhalfbricking is my favourite. It is difficult to imagine that there was a finer group of British musicians at this time. The whole album has moments of sheer perfection. In the case of Sandy’s immortal ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’ the perfection holds throughout the track.

Bruce Springsteen – Darkness on the Edge of Town

It is this classic, definitive collaboration with the E-Street Band that is my number one go-to album by him. It is pre the superstardom he was to have. The process of making great art is pressed into these tracks on ‘Darkness.’

Perpignan, French Catalonia and our Café

This chapter is taken from my book ‘Off the Autoroute’ which is now available on Kobo as well as Amazon The area around Perpignan in French Catalonia is where our travels all started around twenty-five years ago. It is a short hop from Provence so let us see what we found there starting in PerpignanContinue reading “Perpignan, French Catalonia and our Café”