This week has been a week of wandering, without much wondering. The streets of London are wet and cold, and I have trod most of them, in the rain, my satchel swinging at my side.
I have received my marvellous copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses - truly a thing of wonder. It's Arthur Golding's translation, published by the Folio Society in goat-skin. To open it, hold it and read it is in and of itself an act of grace and beauty. If ever there was a case for the real book, this is it. They have interleaved the poem with Titian's paintings - my favourite, of course, being Bacchus and Ariadne, which partly inspired The Liberators.
'...Thus desolate and making doleful moan,
God Bacchus did both comfort her and take her to his bed.
And with an everlasting star, the more her fame to spread,
He took the chaplet from her head and up to heaven it threw.'
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