Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
It’s 20 May 2008 off the coast of the Bahamas. I am a trainee shark wrangler and currently have over a hundred of them circling me as I float on the ocean bed watching my mentor feed, study and inspect each one. His name was Jeremiah Sullivan and, fortunately for me, he was one of the world’s leading shark experts.
Ross Edgley • The Art of Resilience: Strategies for an Unbreakable Mind and Body
The guest appearance was usually a highlight of the week, although I sometimes felt that the group was less welcoming than they might be. Historian Lucy Hughes-Hallett had been left sitting in a room on her own. The explorer Benedict Allen had been asked to change a lightbulb ‘since you’re so tall’. Much later Allen had stripped off his clothes to
... See moreMiranda France • The Writing School
True to form, less than three months later, Stuart was off – again.
Bear Grylls • True Grit
the ‘Giant’s Castle’
Alice Roberts • The Celts: Search for a Civilization
In his book The Crofter and the Laird, the American author John McPhee journeys to Colonsay, the tiny Hebridean island that was the home of his ancestors. Here, he discovers, ‘almost every rise of ground, every beach, field, cliff, gully, cave, and skerry has a name’. The island has only 138 inhabitants, but 1,600 place names.
Joe Moran • First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life.
And a little dose of eccentricity so often goes hand in hand with such endeavours.