I often wish that I were a painter, instead of a writer: given the talent of, say, a Velasquez – or better still a Goya – I might be able to capture the extraordinary sights that I see around me every day. There is an oddly surrealistic quality to living in the Spanish campo that I’m sure most of those extranjeros who live in their British-only ghettoes down there on the costas never experience. In Britain there is an almost total severance from the past, which is more than the result of history... Sign in to see full entry.