The native taste

So many of them went out walking,
so many of them untentative. If a
cadence is native to the English,
is it the footfall, shedding boy-
hood, stamped by Fielding's Joseph 
Andrews, and rich tradition since,
which marks their alien vistas as
domestic nourishment, achieved? 

               My chief object in settling in Spain
               was to educate myself. Four years on
               the modern side of a public school 
               followed by four years spent in the
               war had left me very ignorant about
               many things that I wished to know. I
               had therefore shipped off to Almería
               a number of wooden cases packed with
               books that I had selected with care.

               This immense panorama gave its char-
               acter to the humble village that
               looked out on to it. It could never
               be escaped from and it dwarfed every-
               thing else. In summer when the sun was
               high it became a pulsating jangle of
               reds and yellows and magentas in which
               nothing that was hard could be distin-
               guished; then in the evening the shapes
               reaffirmed themselves while mauve and
               lilac tones gave a look almost of trans-
               parency to the mountains of the coastal
               range. In storms the scene became dram-
               atic with mists swirling by and great
               rainclouds piled overhead, while at
               night.. the stars glittered as fierce-
               ly as they do in deserts.

               

Gerald Brenan

Personal Record

  1920 - 1972

Alfred A. Knopf, 1975©

Jack Adair-Bevan

Paûla Zarate

Matthew Pennington

Iain Pennington

The Ethicurean Cookbook

  Recipes, Foods and Spirituous

  Liquors, from our Bounteous

  Walled Garden in the Several

  Seasons of the Year

  [The Mendips, Somerset]

    Winter:  Beetroot Carpaccio

    with honeyed walnuts, mizuna,

    purslane, land cress, and flaky

    sea salt

Ebury Press

Random House, 2013©

i   Martin Conte

ii  Brenan at Yegen