Hours in a library

Let us begin by clearing up the old confusion between the man who loves learning and the man who loves reading, and point out that there is no connection whatever between the two. A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers. A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what it suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading.

Amazing, isn't it?

Heart of oak - a gallery of Stephen Taylor's tree paintings

After the death of his mother, a close friend and his father, the artist Stephen Taylor began a series of paintings in a field close to his childhood home. After four years painting in the field he found one oak which became the focus of his work. Here he presents some of the 50 paintings of that particular tree he made during three years, and the journey of light and colour on which it sent him