Atop the grassy mound to the right of the 18th hole of the Old Course sit seven benches, invisible beneath the bodies of vitamin-D-deprived St Andrews residents on a sunny day. Faces tilted toward the sky, the students fail to notice the sun-warmed gold plaques pressing insistently into their shoulders and backs. It is not the people who these A6 brass frames immortalise, however, that are requesting attention, but those who commissioned them. The plaques reflect the blue light of the...

The Importance of Literature in Dark Times The world has always been about to end. That is, if you listen to the words of Millenarians in 1789, modern-day Jehovah’s Witnesses, pagans circling around Stonehenge, or today, the students of St Andrews amidst a geopolitical crisis. Online, particularly, a mist of despair and fear has descended, muddying the path to a clear mind. This atmosphere of ‘dark times’ is no longer chimeric, even if you can drag yourself away from your phone’s never-ending...

To swim in the North Sea is to tingle. You feel it in your skin as salt finds its way into every pore, in your throat as it gasps for air, in your scalp and eyebrows — every nerve ending is struck. Emerging from the water you feel, ironically, like there is a fire burning behind the eyes. To then write about your swimming experience, according to nature-writer Roger Deakin, is a way to revive these bodily electrifying moments.  Deakin’s groundbreaking novel, Waterlog,  records not just his...