African jazz from a Land Rover
In 1964, not long before his 19th birthday, my father set off for Bechuanaland – or Botswana as it would shortly become. At the time, the country was about to…
The pleasure of the pocket cartoon
Don’t get me wrong, I love spending ages on a drawing – playing with textures and trying to improve my penmanship – but there’s also a lot of pleasure in…
Wild camping and open-air life
In some ways we’ve come a long way since the 1930s, and in others we really haven’t. In case you missed it, next week a Dartmoor landowner is taking the…
After hours at the museum
Among my various ambitions for this year, one is to get better with my pens and paints. I love drawing but I don’t practise it enough, so I don’t improve…
A return to travel writing
When the plague hit, I was in Øvre Dividal National Park in northern Norway, tramping between mountain huts in the powdery snow and learning the hard way that there is…
Some cartoons of 2021
2021 was another year in which I ended up getting through quite a lot of ink. While I’ve posted a lot of it on social media at one point or…
Fisherfield
Last week I escaped back out into the wide world with a trip to Fisherfield Forest in north-west Scotland. Not actually a forest at all, it’s a wide open area…
The Power of the Dog
Back in April, my little mate Charlie dog trotted off into the great beyond. Considering he was a toy poodle who weighed 4.5 kilos and was shorter than a wellington…
Some cartoons of 2020
In a year where I did very little of interest, I did draw quite a lot of cartoons in 2020. I suppose I find it quite soothing. Apart from the…
A compendium of campfire cookstrips
Some years ago I used to draw campfire cookstrips for Scouting magazine. Presented in the style of Len Deighton’s famous 1960s illustrations from the Observer and the Action Cookbook, my…
