MY NAME comes from the Saxon and means “of the bird”; some primitive ancestor was presumably mustered under such an emblem. I should like to think it was that of a raven, long my secret favourite among species, but that is purely wishful. I remember years ago seeing ravens over Los Alamos in New Mexico; they seemed, and sounded, familiar things in that otherwise very strange and inhuman landscape, and transported me in a second back to my native Devon. No landscape that has birds, especially widespread ones like the raven, can be totally foreign.
I have always felt psychologically,…
