Doris O'Brien writes: The whole world seems fixated on keeping in touch with everyone other than those who are with them. Yesterday I observed a couple seated at a table at a pleasant outdoor café, perhaps to enjoy an early dinner together. It could have been a time for hand-holding or sharing the details of one another’s day. Instead, both were staring into their own latest-technology iphones, their minds elsewhere rather than on each other. more »

Nearly everyone is familar with John James Audubon and his seminal color-plate book, The Birds of America. But few people are aware of another monumental 19th c. volume of artwork, Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio. more »

‘I watched the Silver Swan, which had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes-watched him swimming about as comfortably and unconcernedly as it he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweller’s shop - watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and hold up his head and go through the customary and elaborate motions of swallowing it...' Mark Twain more »

From idyllic rural landscapes to gritty cities, the exhibition will showcase a literary map of the British Isles and highlight how writers, from William Shakespeare and Walter Scott to John Lennon and J K Rowling, have recorded the changing spaces of the British Isles in some of their greatest literary works. more »