Getting somewhat annoyed the other day by some toxic pronouncement by a global potentate, I banged my fist down on my desk, and my smartwatch informed me that it looked as if I had taken a fall and that it would send for an emergency ambulance. Just think, sixty years ago I would have had … Continue reading Times Certainly Change

My photograph dates back to the early 1970s and shows one of those streets near the bottom of Lister Lane and Hopwood Lane in Halifax. The precise location doesn't matter - it could be any lane in almost any northern town: with cobbled streets and an obelisk of a mill chimney.

My photo dates back to the 1960s and shows the junction of Cripplegate and Mulcture Hall Road in Halifax. There's a textbook-full of history in the buildings and a library's worth in the names of these two historic streets that run next to Halifax Minster. From healing wells to tolls for grinding corn, there's history … Continue reading Picture History

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 an ever-present dramatic backdrop, and the changing degree of vegetation on the hill could provide a useful timestamp in dating such photos. After consulting the … Continue reading A Beacon Hill Timeline

Shaw Lane in Halifax back in the 70s and 80s was a bit like a vacant film set: spectacular backgrounds waiting for a drama to unfold. You could have made any number of films or gritty TV series with those granite sets in the foreground, those sooty walls in the background, and the occasional mill … Continue reading Film Sets

I've always been attracted to this part of Halifax: the steep hills, cobbled streets, brooding mills ..... and, of course, the delights of the Shears Inn, whose stone-tiled roof features in this photo of mine from 40 or 50 years ago. There's a story which says the area's name - Paris Gates - came about … Continue reading Paris Pub

So, what have we got? We've a bare-faced hillside and a quarried landscape. We've a mill or two, a couple of chimneys, and some terraced houses stacked like dominoes. We've Halifax sixty years ago. We've home.

It seems like a different era: an era of broken walls and spaces laid bare by slum-clearance programmes or enemy bombs. The church is the same; then it was plain Halifax Parish Church, and now it's a Minster. Perhaps it's the swings that date it - can this really be what was meant by the … Continue reading It’s Swinging Halifax

Is art in danger of being undermined by Artificial Intelligence? Why slave over a canvas for endless hours attempting to achieve a dramatic interpretation of a pub at the bottom of an old cobbled street in Halifax when you can press a button, produce a picture, and then go and enjoy a pint in peace? … Continue reading Art?