Article on Composition for the BTS, 2018? In 1972, the BBC held an Open Competition to write the theme tune for the forthcoming Winter Olympics. Age 5, I sent, in…

Having read Matt Gee’s excellent article on Audition Technique in the BTS summer issue, I thought I’d have a stab at writing a few words about the next stage: Trials.…

     So many pieces, from school essays onwards, have titles that have been encouraged to be positive, appealing, in-drawing for readers. But after my day in Zurich, I have no…

In 1988 my friend from college Dai Tyler got a job in north Holland. He and I had been students at Guildhall together, in the same year as the late…

The sun beams down on red-tiled rooves And bleached Belem stands like a galleon Yellow trams clang along the front Where custard tarts are served in mint-white chambers A tricolour…

Plumage.  A homage to Plum. Or an homage? He’s been called the greatest writer of English since Shakespeare. Of course it’s a different sort of English from Shakespeare’s Elizabethan genius.…

Although we went to Orkney first for a couple of days, this story is only about Shetland and its various islands. It’s inexplicable, but both of us felt an instant…

And we’re off to see the puffins, the wonderful puffins of Unst… Helen Jenkins, June 2011. So…  I’m in the privileged position this year of being allowed to keep the…

The view coming into land at Sumburgh airport is one we always look forward to. On a clear day you can see at least as far as the top of…

Shetland is an open paradise.  A pattern of land and sea, of moors and lochs, of slopes and tarns, of green and blue, where you can see as far as…