Monday, May 24, 2010

Ten more of the best

It's time for my latest selection of favourite posts from this blog, with a new set of links in the column to the right underneath The English Buildings Book. This time, it's a selection of ruins, stretching across time from the Roman period to the twentieth century. My ten ruins range from the ecclesiastical to the industrial, the palatial to the humble. I hope those of you who are new to the blog will enjoy looking at some of these.

4 comments:

bazza said...

Hello Philp. This post is very timely for me as a newcomer. Thanks!
There is something about a ruined building that fires the imagination I think. The 'Isolated Church' post reminded me of how I felt the first time at Glastonbury.
Incidentally, I was interested to see 'The Joy of Yiddish' among your favourite books. By father told me that his Russian Jewish parents spoke it at home. He understood it but as a child but I was not interested; I regret it now.

Philip Wilkinson said...

If you don't know it, The Joys of Yiddish is a marvellous book. It's really about the Yiddish words that have found their way into English, of which there are scores, and the author, Leo Rosten, illustrates their use with anecdotes and jokes - the book contains the best collection of Jewish jokes I know. I wore out my original paperback copy of the book and now have it in hardback.

Vinogirl said...

What a brilliant idea. Especially like the the isolated church at Lancaut, on the banks of one of my very favourite English/Welsh rivers.

Philip Wilkinson said...

Vinogirl: The Wye is a beautiful river, both in its cliff-sided lower reaches where Lancaut is and in its upper stretches too. For so much of its course it feels quiet, isolated, bounded by fields and trees.