Author: George Adams
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Vanishing Landscapes: In Conversation with Bonnie Lander Johnson
Artwork by Steven Mardones (2025) Bonnie Lander Johnson’s Vanishing Landscapes: The Story of Plants and How We Lost Them (Hodder Press, 2025) explores the histories of seven plants in Britain – apples, saffron, woad, reeds, oak, grapes and wheat. The book documents Bonnie’s conversations with people who keep traditional, local techniques of working with plants…
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Knocking Language Sideways
Artwork by Josse Mansilla (2025) One Tuesday evening in October, within the eaves and red-gold curtains of the Old Divinity School at St John’s College, Cambridge, The Poems of Seamus Heaney was launched to a packed house with modest fanfare. As the book’s jacket sleeve reads, ‘[t]his is the long-awaited, definitive edition of Seamus Heaney’s…
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Technicolour Victoriana: Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein
Artwork by Josse Mansilla (2025) Del Toro’s reimagining of Mary Shelley’s modern myth begins by going back to its source material. A Danish ship is stuck in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to the North Pole. The injured Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is found near-dead on the ice, pursued by the Creature (Jacob Elordi),…
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It Could be Sweet
Harold Offeh, Covers. After Betty Davis. They Say I’m Different, 1974 (2013), C-print. Courtesy of the artist. Entering the sliding doors on a dreary, rain-soaked November morning, hanging up my sodden jacket, and descending the steps into the foyer space that lies between the two main rooms of the Kettle’s Yard gallery, I was struck…
The Camera 