OCT
Introducing
OCTOBER 2025
4 October is World Animals Day, the 100th anniversary of the international day, its 2025 slogan ‘Save Animals, Save the Planet!’
Aidan Quinn of Bath UK’s most beautiful art gallery, appropriately entitled Beaux Arts, writes in his newsletter, ‘At home there is a robin that sings in the last of the light, high in a nearby tree, and just before the bats appear in the semi-darkness. Amazing to think of the indescribable ‘otherness’ of wild animals.’
It is some of that ‘otherness’ that this STS takes time to think about, endeavouring to capture a small sample of its many wonders.
We start with ART OF THE MONTH, Moretto da Brescia’s early C16th portrayal of animals sharing the forty days Jesus spent alone enduring temptation by Satan, an appealing work he entitled Christ in the Wilderness.
From a desert of ancient Palestine our geographical range then extends to take in the wooded countryside of a southern England farm, as Adam Nicolson shares the new understanding of bird life Brescia gained from writing his latest book.
We then clamber to the heights of the Himalayan ranges to meet one fine yak, among other native-dwellers, before we dip down to the Aegean. Here, in our entry for PLACE, we make a return to Mount Athos for Part II of our coverage of the Greek peninsula. As our correspondent Harry Spry-Leverton describes, here we arrive at a place where religious strictures mean that female animals are banned from entering – although we learn that, despite this, cats and their kittens have found a way to thrive.
Thriving for animals generally is a grave concern, so many reports and surveys indicating species after species becoming endangered as a result of our selfish, careless and despoiling ways of living.
Under PEOPLE, His Holiness the Dalai Lama writes vividly of the wildlife he observed in Tibet during his childhood, his sad rider being that this luxuriance is no longer in evidence there.
We note the Nepalese end October Festival of Kukur Tihar, a time for celebrating the age-old companionship humans enjoy with dogs.
And in NOTES AND JOTTINGS our closing focus is on the joy and pleasure with which animals provide us, and we include recommendations for books: a new one on the poetry of birds, and glorious ‘coffee table’ offerings with magnificent illustrations of Arabian horses, butterflies, and the art that over the ages has showcased our canine companions.
PLUS: WINNING WILDLIFE ART
– congratulating Emma Swift,
finalist in this year’s Wildlife Artist of the Year competition
The Wildlife Artist of the Year (WAY) annual competition was founded to create a legacy for wildlife art that would go beyond the life and reach of any one person. Renowned wildlife artist and champion of animals David Shepherd CBE (1930-2017) was directly involved in its inception. Strongly believing creativity could inspire change, ultimately Shepherd wanted to ensure that this would go on. Since its inception WAY has inspired thousands of artists to honour the beauty of the wild world and highlight its vulnerability. In turn, tens of thousands of unique pieces of art have been created and entered into the competition, each with the potential to spark the conversation about conservation.
WAY writes this about Emma Swift, ‘Emma has been shortlisted for Wildlife Artist of the Year seven times. Her work underscores the interconnectedness of wildlife and environment, reminding us that every species has a role to play.’
Of her fantastically impact-ful giraffe portrait Emma writes, ‘I love to combine vivid colours with bold brush strokes, alongside more intricate detail.’ Of time spent up close with African wildlife she says, ‘I enjoy researching my subject so I can be accurate with details. However, my work goes beyond the traditionally photo-realistic – as more painterly, very colourful – and inquisitive! Colour just seems to work itself into unexpected places.’ And she adds, ‘I’m hugely inspired by the natural world and the charities and people who strive to protect it and it’s been an honour to help raise money through sales of my work.’
ART OF THE MONTH
CHRIST in the WILDERNESS
by
MORETTO DA BRESCIA (1498 – 1544)
In the calendar: The penitential period of Lent observed by prayer, fasting and almsgiving, a period of six weeks before the Passion of the Crucifixion and Resurrection at Easter, corresponds in the Christian calendar with Christ’s days of temptation in the wilderness.
The frame of reference: The Gospel of Saint Mark, Chapter 1 vs 12 – 15 recounts that after Christ was baptized he was led into the Wilderness by the Holy Spirit, where he fasted for forty days and was ‘tested by Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels administered to him.’
The painting: A small oil on canvas, the painting is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. The composition is informal, the painting nevertheless succeeding as a convincing work of devotional art.
A pretty acquamarine sky lights up the rocky outcrop where we find Jesus sojourning in the wilderness, a lyrical scene showing the Saviour slightly shaded by delicate foliage, seated in the company of a menagerie of animals and birds. It’s a surprising representation of a Biblical episode usually considered one of privation and stress and strain, Jesus appearing here neither famished nor anguished. Rather, he is richly robed, his stance is resigned but he seems relaxed, his mood contemplative.
The birds, including a heron and a raven, appear undisturbed by his presence, continuing to peck the ground. A lion is dozing, positively cosied-up at Jesus’ side, while the antelope and fox are crouched close to the ground in veneration, as is a small, furred lumpen creature close to his feet. Two accompanying young angels fly in the sky behind this scenario – but they are set somehow quite apart from the intent, fully-developed relationship of mutual respect which we can observe between Christ and the animals in this affectionate, intimate and quietly compelling scene.
The artist: Moretto da Brescia lived through the peak of the Italian High Renaissance, from 1498 -1544. Born Alessandro Bonvicino, the Moretto (‘little Moor’) of his painterly name was perhaps due to a darker complexion, while Brescia derives from the name of his birthplace in Lombardy. Moretto largely worked there, although some evidence indicates he perhaps spent time in Venice apprenticed to Titian. He spent a short while in Padua. He did undertake portraits (one is in the National Gallery, London) but Moretto’s major works were altarpieces in oil described as ‘sedate’ (as opposed to ‘narrative’.)
Painted in 1515-20, his Christ in the Wilderness demonstrates a talent that was acknowledged early, while he was still a teenager.
Wikipedia tells us the passions inspiring Moretto’s style through his career were eclectic, writing that ‘[his style] resembles that of Giorgione or late Bellini, while he also conceived great enthusiasm for Raphael .. but on the other hand, his classical serenity resembles that of Leonardo [da Vinci].’ What stands out overall however, is Moretto’s naturalism, a freshness of colour and a straightforward directness of composition which is a keynote of C16th paintings from Lombardy.
Some of his works are referred to as having a ‘classicising sweet intensity’, and his Christ in the Wilderness could be said to epitomize that emotional mix. He was known to be very pious, preparing himself for any great act of sacred art by prayer and fasting.
LITERATURE
ADAM NICOLSON (1957 – )
BIRD SCHOOL – A Beginner in the Wood (William Collins London, 2025)
What things are ‘coloured, feathered, voluble, quick, inaccessible’? And also ‘unknowably alive’ with ‘something fractal about them, so that the more you look the less you know? Or perhaps the more you look, the more you know how little you know?’
In case you haven’t guessed, it’s with these riddling words that Adam Nicolson invites us into the intricate leafy world of his new book celebrating – while also concernedly documenting – the status quo of birdlife in Britain today.
And what a piece of work it is…!
Not only a lyrically-written profound and philosophical exploration of the birds all around us, interlinking this with all the relevant cutting edge research – this level of professionalism any fan of Nicolson’s approach to his subjects would expect – the book is also a heart-warming account of what precisely the important learning process to which he dedicated himself was like. A process which has as its product a truly definitive resource, a crucial one, marking as it does a critical moment for birdlife.
Nicolson tells his readers how he wanted to look and listen, to return to ‘bird school’ and see what it might teach him. Bird School describes for us how, in setting about this, he first built a small shed on stilts on his Surrey farm, Perch Hill.
Siting the shed up amongst the trees in a forgotten field overrun by bracken and thicketed by brambles, the haunt of deer and many birds, he began his study: witness to nightingales, the occasional cuckoo, ravens, robins, owls and, in summer, the sweet-singing warblers that come north from Africa to breed in English woods.
Cocooned inside, season after season, from this vantage point of acute observation Nicolson got to know the birds: where they nest, how they sing, how they mate and fight, what preys on them, what they are like as living things.
Here is how he describes the shed’s very first visitor, a tiny wren seeking shelter from the winter cold, ‘It often chattered to me.. usually very quietly it sang in the frost, as if it were thawing, a tiny whistling… The wren summoned a kind of fondness in me .. but I know now quietness is not the wren’s default mode. A wren.. sings with a loud urgency… and something about that combination of stridency and smallness, the sheer sweetness of the wren and its loud ferocity, made it the perfect beginning for my lessons…’
And here is Nicolson’s description of how his further experiences marked him, ‘This [was a] sudden immersion in the hereness of here. I was living in a more populated and variegated world than I had ever understood, a richer place, more layered and more inhabited than I could have guessed….I was in a kind of Paradise.’
At the same time as this concentrated research period, Nicolson’s wife, Sarah (as in Raven, famed gardener and plant expert) was embarking on a long and careful study of how to make their farmhouse’s garden more bird-rich, providing food, shelter and diversity, while coming to understand just how much a garden benefits them. Her concluding chapter ‘Birds in the Garden’ is a helpful guide and excellent ancillary to the notes, reading suggestions and extensive picture collection which make Bird School such a practical highly commendable and worthwhile read.
A journalist and columnist, Nicolson’s written for the Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Telegraph, National Geographic Magazine and Granta, to which he is a contributing editor. He has made several television and radio series and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Society of Antiquaries.
His books’ subjects span all the great topics: history and philosophy, nature and landscape, literary masterpieces, wanderlust, the lure of the sea.
They include:
– Sea Room past and present on the Hebrides’ uninhabited Shiant Isles
– God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible
– The Mighty Dead – Why Homer Matters – exploring epic Greek poetry
– The Seabird’s Cry about the disaster afflicting the world’s seabirds
– The Making of Poetry on the 1790s Romantic Revolution in England
– Life Between the Tides – the ebb/ flow of tides in human and animal life
– How To Be – an exploration of the world of the first Greek thinkers
PEOPLE
HIS HOLINESS TENZING GYATSO, 14TH DALAI LAMA (1935 – )
Born a lowly farmer’s son, it was in his early childhood that the 14th Dalai Lama was named as Tibet’s ‘God-King’ and leader of its Buddhist faith. Since going into exile in India in 1959 when Mao Zedong’s military occupation of Tibet brought his rule to an end, the Dalai Lama has been embraced by the West, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
As the leader of the world’s most secluded people, the Dalai Lama has become the most recognizable face of a religion practised by nearly 500 million people worldwide. But His Holiness’ prominence extends far beyond the borders of his own faith, with many practices he endorses such as mindfulness and meditation permeating the lives of millions more around the world.
Buddhism dates from about five hundred years BCE and, encompassing traditions, beliefs and spiritual practices, can be viewed as both a religion and a philosophy.
The boy born Lhamo Thondup in 1935 was identified as the 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama when he was just two years old, after a retinue of senior lamas, (Buddhist Tibetan monks) had followed a series of oracles and prophecies to arrive at his village in northeastern Tibet. The precocious toddler seemed to recognize objects belonging to the 13th Dalai Lama, prompting the lamas to proclaim him the celestial heir.
Aged only four and given the new name Tenzing Gyatso, the little boy was carried on a golden palanquin into the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, to be ensconced in its resplendent Potala Palace.
A daily routine of spiritual teaching by religious scholars followed, augmented by the tuition from an Austrian, Heinrich Harrer, who described his experiences in his book Seven Years in Tibet (E P Dutton, New York 1954).
Of the years 1944-51 which he spent in Lhasa Harrer subsequently recalled, ‘I often think I still hear the cries of the wild geese and the cranes and the beating of their wings as they fly over Lhasa in the clear, cold moonlight.’
After twenty four years of rule, in 1959 the Dalai Lama was forced to flee across the mountains to India where a Government in Exile was established in Dharamshala. Often referred to as ‘Little Lhasa’, here a community was created for the approximately 80,000 Tibetan refugees who had followed him. In order to teach Tibetan children their language, history, religion, and culture, he created an educational system, an Institute of Performing Arts, and an university.
Determined to also preserve Tibetan Buddhist teachings and the Tibetan way of life, he supported the re-founding of 200 monasteries and nunneries.
Today, half of the world’s 500 million Tibetan Buddhists live in India, while His Holiness’ most recent proclamation about his successor as Dalai Lama states that this individual will come from a ‘free country.’
In the Dalai Lama’s office’s archive on www.dalailama.com videos of His Holiness’ talks on subjects such as peace, happiness and compassion, modern ethics, the environment, economic and social issues, gender and the empowerment of women are available, as is the schedule of his future public appearances.
Here is how Tenzing Gyatso recalls his relationship with animals in his early life, expressing regret for the decimation of Tibetan wildlife that’s taken place since then;
‘My chief memory of the three-month journey across Tibet – from my birthplace at Takster in the East to Lhasa where I was formally proclaimed Dalai Lama as a four-year-old boy – is of the wildlife we encountered along the way.
And as a young man, I recall seeing great numbers of different species whenever I travelled outside Lhasa.
Immense herds of wild asses and yak freely roamed the great plains. Occasionally we would catch sight of shimmering herds of the shy Tibetan gazelle, of the white-lipped deer, or of our majestic antelope.
I loved to watch the birds: the dignified bearded eagle soaring high above monasteries and perched up in the mountains; the flocks of geese; and occasionally, at night, to hear the call of the long-eared owl.
As a child in my rooms at the top of the Potala, the winter palace, I spent countless hours studying the behaviour of the sacred red-beaked horned eagle which nested in the crevices of its walls.
And in the marshlands behind the summer palace, I often saw pairs of black-necked cranes – epitomizing for me elegance and grace.
All this is not to mention the crowning glory of Tibetan fauna: the bears and mountain foxes, the wolves, and the beautiful snow leopard, and the lynx. Then too our gentle-faced giant panda, native to the border area between Tibet and China.
This profusion of wildlife is no longer to be found. Partly due to hunting, but primarily due to loss of habitat, what remains half a century after Tibet’s occupation is only a small fraction of what was there before.
Before, wild animals would often come close to the house, whereas today they are hardly to be seen.’
Journalist Chen Jing writes in an article about the profound connection Tibetans feel with animals: (www.globaltimes.cn/page/202402) ‘Wild animals in the highland regions, such as snow leopards and Tibetan foxes, are seen as sacred beings with mystical powers. These powers give them a special connection with divine entities, or mean that they can act as prophets, capable of sensing natural disasters.’
Chen describes this relationship as shaping people’s values and beliefs, being reflected in their daily lives and religious practice. Explaining animals’ important role in pastoral life, he writes that this means yaks, sheep and horses are vital, not only for providing food, fur and bones, transport etc – but because the part they play goes beyond being simply an element in a ‘survival relationship.’ The presence of animals provides people with solace and, as a result of this comfort, they receive reverence, gratitude and respect in return.
The poignancy of this relationship is set out to perfection in Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, the first Oscar-nominated film to emerge from Bhutan, another Buddhist mountain kingdom. Quietly persistent, utterly convincing, this film about life in the Thunder Dragon Kingdom is a heart-catcher.
Available on Netflix, it’s the first film directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji. Ugyen, the guitar-strumming ‘modern’ young teacher from Bhutan’s capital is played by Sherab Dorji. Ugyen’s reluctant 6-day clamber up via high mountain passes to the 11,000’ altitude hamlet of Lunana to work at the world’s most remote school is the beginning of the changes to his perspective that will mark him forever. Lunana locals, people who’d never set foot in a cinema nor seen a film, take the other roles.
Director Dorji speaks of conceiving the film as a testament to the deep Buddhist beliefs he holds which underline the spiritual responsibility of teachers, people who ‘touch the future.’
But of course, inevitably perhaps, it’s the yak of the title, darkly handsome unforgettable Norbu, who is the film’s outstanding star.
‘In Tibetan Buddhism’ Chen continues, ‘some deities are believed to incarnate as animals .. with temple murals depicting elephants, monkeys, deer and rabbits, animals which are considered auspicious and symbolic of luck and fortune. From childhood Buddhists are taught that every life deserves dignity, animal cruelty being condemned and shunned. In urban life.. lost animals receive kindness and blessings from everyone.’
In Katmandhu, capital of Nepal, another Himalayan kingdom – one where Buddhism was born but where Hinduism is the chief religion – around the city I saw with my own eyes this tolerance and affection in practice, particularly in relation to dogs.
In both Buddlist and Hindu temples, as in our collage illustration, dogs enter freely and are not shoo-ed away. Meanwhile, outside every one of the small food shops which line the streets there’s a well-fed dog or two, often short-snouted and gingery, sprawling contentedly.
As regards non-companion animals, there are many reports of humane organisations at work assisting with the high count of feral dogs that roam Katmandhu and the other cities of the Sacred Valley.
Across the Nepalese nation an annual Hindu Kukur Tihar Festival takes place the last weekend of October, celebrating the companionable relationship which dogs and humans enjoy. During this festival people worship their dogs, bathe them, and decorate them with a yellow ‘tika’ dot pasted between their brows, a sacred mark indicative of divine connection, spiritual awareness and protection. Flower garlands, often of the seasonal marigold, are placed around their necks. They’re offered food including meat, milk and eggs – and it is considered a sin if someone behaves disrespectfully to a dog on this day.
PLACE
MOUNT ATHOS PART II
As the second part of coverage of the unique-in-the-world Hellenic peninsula,
Mount Athos, this month’s STS has a first-hand report
from our correspondent Harry Spry-Leverton, a despatch sent while visiting this sacred place to which he, like so many, finds himself drawn back again and again
Mount Athos is a place I have had an affinity with for much of my life, this most recent visit my ninth or tenth. My first was in 1970, over half a century ago, and this one is a two-week expedition with the Friends of Mount Athos (FoMA) during which, returning for another stay in one of the peninsula’s twenty monasteries, I get the chance to absorb the character of an individual place and build relationships, with shared meals and attendance at services.
I was once told that the true way to attain the spirit of Mount Athos is to walk the peninsula’s stony, isolated footpaths, inevitably arriving at your monastery hot and weary.
The traditional greeting in the monastery Guesthouse is still a welcoming tumbler of water, a reviving glass of raki (40% proof fermented grape pomace) and a piece of sugary loukoum (Turkish Delight.)
Thanks to the efforts of Friends of Mount Athos (FoMA) great inroads have been made in restoring and upkeeping these footpaths, the result of expeditions such as mine, when FoMA Footpath Clearer volunteers devote a fortnight to lopping, shearing and cutting fallen branches or trees. No power tools are allowed to desecrate the silence and calm of the Holy Mountain (although this is not so in the monasteries undergoing renovation and repair.) Accurate mapping has also taken place, and detailed footpath descriptions are available.
Central to the monastic life on the Mountain is religious observance. Legend has it that the Virgin Mary, late in her life, took sail from the Holy Land to Cyprus and was blown (considerably) off course, landing on the Mountain and declaring it to be her Garden. A remote and wild area, it has been known ever since as a refuge for ascetics, hermits and those seeking a simple religious life.
The oldest of the monasteries was founded well over a thousand years ago. The rhythmic beat of the semantron, (wooden plank) which is the calling to prayer, often heard at night and repeated three times with – it seems – increasing urgency in the beat on the wood, is fundamental to the daily round. As is the pealing of church bells. The raising of male voices in Gregorian chant, whether heard from outside or, sitting in attendance, is such a haunting sound, resonating from the many domes of the monastery church or smaller chapel. Non-Orthodox are welcome to attend services at many monasteries, with my favourite being Vespers followed by the progress from catholicon (church) to trapeza (refectory.)
Attending a service gives a chance to reflect at day’s end and there is, without doubt, a spirituality that takes hold over time spent here. (This is true despite not nowadays being entirely cut off from the world or family, since mobile phone communication is easy.) Throughout the year there are many Christian festivals, Saints days, feast days, vigils, and fasting days. I can appreciate why the certainties of the Orthodox faith attract so many in these wishy-washy times and an uncertain future for, particularly, the Church of England.
Due to its association with the Mother of God, Mount Athos has historically been off limits to women. Entry by land is difficult and hazardous and the ferries that ply both the east and west coast to the various monasteries and their arsanas (landing places) are regulated, with documentation being necessary and shown. Essentially, the Holy Mountain has been a womanless land for centuries.
This ban even extends to female animals, as the sight of mating would be profane to the eyes of the monks. Mules are still used to transport goods, particularly over the steep tracks around the base of the Holy Mountain itself. Evidence of boars is common and the sound of jackals calling at night is frequently heard, together with the answering rebuke from the local dog pack. However, cats and their kittens are seen in profusion at the monasteries, and eggs have been known in the vegetarian diet.
Today pilgrims to the Mountain are numerous, arriving daily on large ferries. Pilgrims are allowed to stay three nights with accommodation and simple meals – but some stay for longer.
Byzantine academics, architectural historians, iconographers, artists, and painters of today – even Footpath Clearers – all have found a canvas here. Some come to study the wonderful and colourful religious murals, awash with Biblical scenes and symbology, which decorate so many of the catholicon, trapeza and public spaces of the monasteries, sketes (smaller monastic communities), and hermit’s cells across the peninsula.
Acknowledging the changes since my first visit, I nevertheless still find the architectural detail fascinating: the curve of a cobbled entrance gate, the balconies and galleries of the domestic quarters, the glimpse of the sea below or a receding coastline through a mundane washroom window. I’m aware some of these buildings have withstood Crusader, Saracen, and pirate in their time – although now some are in decline with vast empty wings open to the sky.
Around me though, I am seeing the results of a huge renaissance over the last forty years, witnessing how many monasteries now have a tall crane looming overhead and scaffolding up over many storeys. The vast Russian Orthodox monastery of Panteleimon, for example, in decline in 1970, having had a dwindling population of monks since the 1917 Revolution, now gleams golden-domed above the seashore, ‘oligarch money’ having been poured into it and a visit made here by President Putin in 2016.
For me, a striking change is the huge increase in vehicular traffic. Then, on arrival at the small port of Dafni, a clapped-out 1950s school bus would transport you along very rough tracks up to the administrative capital village of Karyes, on the peninsula’s ridge line, and then down again to the monastery of Iviron on the other coast. This track now is gleaming tarmac with yellow lines, traffic signs, and even bus stops. I recently spotted speed bumps in Karyes.
Fortunately, private cars are not allowed – but each monastery now has its own transport: minibuses and lorries are common together with a plethora of 4×4 vehicles. New roads and tracks are still being pushed out and inevitably, this has had a deleterious effect on the peninsula’s ancient footpaths which were, for hundreds of years, the main method of communication.
Glimmering high over everything at the far end of the peninsula is the Holy Mountain, so familiar in profile, and often mist-shrouded or patched with snow: the last scene one recalls when leaving on the ferry.
On this, as on each of my last few visits, it occurs to me this could be the final time I experience the world of Mount Athos. The years roll by, creaking bones protest at monastic mattresses, the footpaths seem ever steeper. However, I suspect not: Mount Athos calls to you, draws you back. It is an incredibly special place, particularly so in these uncertain times: not the easiest to attain and, once gained, hard to leave behind.
Harry Spry-Leverton wishes to note that his despatch is his own personal account and is no way representing the views of the Friends of Mount Athos, details for which follow:
The Friends of Mount Athos (FoMA), a registered charity, is a society formed in 1990 by people who shared a common interest for the monasteries of Mount Athos. King Charles III is currently the society’s royal patron.
FoMA is dedicated to the study and promotion of the history, culture, arts, architecture, natural history, and literature of the Orthodox monasteries of Mount Athos.
The society also acts as a group of friends and supporters of Mount Athos and coordinating appeals and donations, in consultation with the monastic authorities, aims to provide assistance where it is practicable and needed.
As a service to the monasteries and to pilgrims, the society clears and maintains the peninsula’s ancient footpaths, the stone-paved kalderimi paths, many of which date back to Byzantine times.
On its website athosfriends.org it provides detailed footpath descriptions with GPS tracks, a regularly updated report on the condition of the paths, and a Pilgrim Map.
NOTES AND JOTTINGS
TELLING QUOTES, COMPREHENSIVE READS
ON DOGS:
Groucho Mark alerted us,
‘Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s
too dark to read…’
Pickeral Tamsin 5000 YEARS of the DOG in ART
(Merrell, London 2008)
ON HORSES:
Omar, the Prophet’s Companion proclaimed,
‘Love horses and look after them, for they deserve your tenderness; treat them as you do your children’
Amirsadeghi Hossein DRINKERS of the WIND – THE ARABIAN HORSE,
History, Mystery and Magic
(Thames and Hudson, London 1998)
ON BIRDS:
Poet Christina Rosetti confessed,
‘My heart is like a singing bird’
Carr Samuel (ed) THE POETRY OF BIRDS
(Batsford, London 2023)
ON BUTTERFLIES:
John Keats’ expressed his love like this in a letter to Fanny Brawne,
‘I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days –
three such days with you I could fill with more delight
than fifty common years could ever contain’
Baran Myriam BUTTERFLIES of the WORLD
(Abrams, New York 2006)
RESOURCES
Tenzin Gyatso The Fourteenth Dalai Lama – Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for the New Millennium (Little, Brown and Company, London 1999)
Dowman Keith Power Places of Kathmandu – Hindu and Buddhist Holy Sites in the Sacred Valley of Nepal (Thames and Hudson, London 1995)
Loch, Sydney Athos: The Holy Mountain (Lutterworth Press, London 1957)
(HS-L noting, ‘It’s still to be found… it has a wonderful and unusual dust jacket.’ )
Thomas, W B ‘Sandy’ Dare To Be Free (Pan, London 1960)
(HS-L noting, ‘This is the WWII escapade of a New Zealander POW who found refuge on Mount Athos before escaping to the Middle East. He describes a wonderful domestic and religious life among the monasteries. The 1960s Pan paperback edition with its lurid cover is particularly desirable.’)