Barney Bardsley

Leeds

Freelance Writer at Freelance

Writer: A Handful of Earth; Old Dog. New ms: Dancing with Bruised Knees. T’ai Chi/Reiki. Instagram: reiki in leeds. https://t.co/XLYh5baohO

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Articles

Goodbye To Russia by Sarah Rainsford – Book Review

Oct 8, 2024 | on-magazine.co.uk | Barney Bardsley

By Barney BardsleyThe beginning of Sarah Rainsford’s story is not on page one of this book, but on page 43. Here, she writes, “Two weeks after the Soviet Union collapsed, I landed in Moscow with a suitcase full of cheese sauce mix and chocolate, and a guidebook to a country that had ceased to exist.”This was January 1992, and Rainsford was just 18 years old. She had come to Russia to teach English for five months.
One Garden Against the World by Kate Bradbury – Book Review

Sep 3, 2024 | on-magazine.co.uk | Barney Bardsley

By Barney BardsleyWhen wildlife writer Kate Bradbury started to write this book, in April 2022, she was filled with worry for the endless dry days we were experiencing, as hardly a drop of rain fell. (This was followed by the heatwave of July 2022, when temperatures reached a record 40 degrees centigrade, even in our cooler UK northern cities.) It felt strange to be reading her words now, in 2024, when – at least for the first half of the year – it never stopped raining at all.
All Fours by Miranda July – Book Review [Canongate]

Jul 23, 2024 | on-magazine.co.uk | Barney Bardsley |Chris Carter

By Barney BardsleyMiranda July’s new novel is definitely not for the fainthearted. Raucous, raw, and sexually explicit, it follows the journey of a 45 year old artist, as she catapults her way out of her steady (but boring?) monogamous marriage, and into a wild, experimental world of affairs, fantasies and re-invention of the self. It starts straightforwardly enough. Our nameless heroine decides to take a solo road trip from Los Angeles to New York.
Hilary Mantel: A Memoir of my Former Self – Review - On: Yorkshire Magazine

Jul 1, 2024 | on-magazine.co.uk | Barney Bardsley

By Barney BardsleyWhen novelist Hilary Mantel died in 2022, there was a real and palpable sense of loss – not just among the literary set, but in society at large. She was, at 70 years old – and after a lifetime of writing to scant acclaim, outside a loyal but relatively modest readership – utterly in her prime. Her Wolf Hall Tudor trilogy had won her two Booker prizes, and had been adapted, to thrilling effect, on both stage and television screen.
Putin and the Return of History by Martin Sixsmith, with Daniel Sixsmith – Review - On: Yorkshire Magazine

May 2, 2024 | on-magazine.co.uk | Barney Bardsley

By Barney BardsleyHard to forget the euphoria of November 1989: the fall of the Berlin Wall; the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe; and the end of the bitter, long, entrenched Cold War between West and East. A couple of years later, some pundits even declared this to be the end point of any future conflict in the region.
Prospect Cottage: Derek Jarman's House by Gilbert McCarragher – Review - On: Yorkshire Magazine

Apr 25, 2024 | on-magazine.co.uk | Barney Bardsley

By Barney BardsleyProspect Cottage stands in solitary splendour on the wild shingle beach at Dungeness. Its canary yellow window frames, set against the black pitch of the wooden slatted walls, make it one of the most iconic sights of our contemporary era. The strange and beautiful garden that surrounds it – packed with rusted metal structures, piles of holey stones, and clumps of vivid shrubs, herbs and flowers – is even more so.
Your Wild and Precious Life by Liz Jensen – Review - On: Yorkshire Magazine

Apr 4, 2024 | on-magazine.co.uk | Barney Bardsley

By Barney BardsleyRaphael Coleman was a young environmental activist – just 25 years old – when he collapsed suddenly in 2020 and died, whilst on a training mission to stop wildlife poachers in South Africa. After a complicated post mortem, the cause of death was given as “right ventricular hypertrophy due to pulmonary stenosis”. His heart – by all accounts a warm, generous and passionate heart – gave out on him.
The Picnic by Matthew Longo – Book Review (Bodley Head)

Mar 13, 2024 | on-magazine.co.uk | Barney Bardsley

By Barney BardsleyFor those old enough to remember it, the fall of the Berlin Wall must count as one of the most seismic – and joyful – world events of their lives. It was a momentous turning point in the global politics of the twentieth century. After being frozen in a Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union for most of the second half of that century, the world now welcomed a new rapprochement between East and West, that positively fizzed with possibility.
Notebooks of a Wandering Monk by Matthieu Ricard – Review - On: Yorkshire Magazine

Feb 22, 2024 | on-magazine.co.uk | Barney Bardsley

By Barney BardsleyThe life journey of Matthieu Ricard, explored here in his lengthy autobiography, is not that of a faint-hearted man. Since the age of 21, and for the past five decades, he has followed a Buddhist path, studying and serving at the feet of the great Tibetan spiritual masters, and living out his days in hermitages and monasteries across Bhutan, Tibet and Nepal, with a devotion that is both touching and awe inspiring.
All the missing pieces

Sep 21, 2023 | barefootbarney.wordpress.com | Barney Bardsley

Stone HeartedThrough the kitchen window, on a concrete slab in the yardSits an old stone, quietly brooding. He brought it to shore for her, one lost and distant spring,On some windswept Beara beach, before the storms rolled in. And in the drawer, a floral summer shirt, roughly folded. Such terrible taste in clothes he had, but she cannot throw it away. Faded photos, bleaching in the hot sun,That comedy hat he wore in the hospice –Laughing at the impunity of dying.