Welcome to the Website of Alan Burnett: writer, blogger, collector of old photographs, and devotee of all things pointless and inconsequential.
Stoned
I took this photo a few years ago in Bradford, and what appealed to me was all the different types of stone on view in an anonymous back street. There’s faced stone, rough stone, cobbled stone, and carved stone, and half a dozen other types you can spend a happy evening inventing names for. You can become almost intoxicated on stone – stoned on stone.
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Windows 80
I call this photograph Windows 80, not as a tribute to some upcoming Microsoft operating system, but because it was taken in 1980 looking out of the window of my parents-in-law’s house…
The Sea, The Sea
My mother loved the sea. Go within salt-spray distance of the coast, and you would find her paddling along the shoreline, watching the waves come in. My brother sent me this photograph…
The Cauldron
On countless occasions in my youth, I would walk through Northowram village, along Howes Lane to the point where the earth ends and Shibden Valley begins. I would focus my camera on…
Hebridean Dreaming
We were whisky distillery-hopping on Islay (can they be a finer way to spend time?) As someone once said (or sung), we stopped into a church, we passed along the…
… And They Sailed Away
My trawl through my collection of old photographs to find a suitable illustration for St. Valentine’s Day came up with this one. As so often is the case, I have…
A Beacon Hill Timeline
I sometimes think that one of my most useful contributions to history would be to produce a Beacon Hill timeline. So many old photographs of Halifax feature Beacon Hill as…
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