“I was recognising this path we were on. It was a faint, white thread on the first photograph of the valley I have ever seen, in the British Museum Guide to the Egyptian Antiquities, et cetera. That was when I was child, small. It was a shot taken from down there of up here. I had said to myself – he said to himself – ‘one day I will walk there, alone, because it will be where they walked and I shall feel them.’ Want to be somewhere long enough and when you get there you remember wanting to be there. Want as a child and as an old man you do not achieve the ambition. You remember a child wanting. Time is exact or place is exact, not both. The world is Heraclitian. You cannot bathe once in the same river.”

A really well done collection of essays. Thoughtful and imaginative and written in a unique voice. Perhaps his earlier collection The Hot Gates has the edge, but there’s not much in it and if you enjoyed one you’ll enjoy the other. ( )