Landor sea

I normally actively avoid reading two books by the same author in succession, but here I am, half way through Iain Sinclair’s Landor’s Tower. I think on balance I prefer his non-fiction, but there’s enough of conspiracy theories and Welsh literary history to keep me going. And quite by chance I opened Kilvert’s Diary at random the other night to find the bit where he talks about Capel-y-Ffin and Llanthony Abbey – places of personal significance to both Helen and me. (I may have to continue this literary trail and read Kilvert properly next: just those few pages I read were beautifully observed, and gloriously pagan as only the Church of England can allow its ministers to be.)

In the current catalogue of Postscript Books (an excellent mail order enterprise I may have to try and ally my incipient publishing company to), there’s a collection of Walter Savage Landor’s poems. The paragraph describing it says one of his poems has been described as the best short poem in the English language – and it doesn’t bloody well say what it is.

And while I’m connecting everything up into my ever-growing Ubertheorie, editor and I were discussing Eric Gill (with his Sans) the other day. Gill lived at Llanthony for a while in the 1920s. (I wonder if the film Sirens – which the IMDB has the wrong poster picture for! – is based on Gill at all, albeit set in Australia rather than Wales..?)

You see, I was supposed to be at a pub quiz this evening, so now I’m pouring out random trivia (which surely should really be ‘quadrivia’).