Martha Spurrier: The mundane everyday usefulness of human rights laws
Liberty director Martha Spurrier talks to Jean-Yves Gilg about how the Human Rights Act has changed English law for the better, giving judges a unique tool to set aside incompatible domestic laws. Continue reading Martha Spurrier: The mundane everyday usefulness of human rights laws
Innsbruck: a walk down the hillside
The tiny balcony protruding on the west side of the Theresien Kirche, in Innsbruck’s Hungerburg suburb, is one of the few external ornaments on the austere 1930s church. Its shadow, already long at nearly 4pm, gives fleeting depth to the plain off-white wall.
Inside, the afternoon sun glides over the simple benches and lights up the post-war frescoes painted by Austrian artist Max Weiler in 1945.
White and gold: autumn days and first snowfalls in Val d’Isère
Val d’Isère, Oct. 2015 — We’ve been walking up the trail above the L piste towards the Ouillette lake, just up from the Laisinant, for nearly two hours. On a summer’s day, this takes no longer than an hour. But the snow that fell for nearly 24 hours yesterday is making our progress much slower on this Autumn afternoon.
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Pretty as a picture: Chaumont’s garden festival 2015
June 2015 — It’s early June at Chaumont-sur-Loire’s annual garden festival, and one of the 26 gardens created around this year’s theme, ‘A Collector’s Garden’, is already getting more attention than others.
From afar, Nuances, a garden created by two Belgian landscape-architects, looks like a large hyper-realist photograph in a modern museum: bright flowers and lush green leaves set in a pure white frame on a pure white wall. A few cardoon leaves flow out towards the viewer, like an 18thcentury Dutch painting within a painting. The blues of the lupins, campanulas and delphiniums are so intense they look like an over-saturated print.
That day, everybody wants their picture taken in front of this live still-life. A few weeks later, as the holiday season begins, Nuances has become the face of Chaumont in all the magazines and TV programmes covering the festival.
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Mellerud to Stockholm: watching out for elk
“Seriously, you should be careful,” says L, who had a near-miss with an elk on her way back home at dusk a few months ago. Her partner M warns us bluntly: “Elks are more dangerous than other animals. They’re tall, so if you hit them their legs go under the car while the body goes straight into your windscreen; that’s two tonnes of animal landing right on you.”
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Göteborg: from industrial powerhouse to boho chic
We push the door to Göteborg’s humble cathedral, whose warm sandstone and pale brick façade cuts a slight silhouette against the summer sky. Near the choir, a singer and his pianist are rehearsing. His voice rises in the peaceful, modest interior and fills the cool off-white walls. We sit for a while, thieving a few musical moments of what he later tells us is from Dvorak’s Biblical Songs.
Today’s drive is much shorter than previous days, a mere 80km from Aalborg to Frederikshaven where we take a ferry across to Göteborg. It’s sunny, although not especially warm. We drive on roads lined with more lupins and daisies, aspens and willows. The countryside is gently undulating and, above our heads, white clouds are torn in long hair-thin strips.
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Aarhus: modern robots and Nordic heroes
Our hotel just outside Aalborg is in an old country house amid sprawling meadows on the edge of a wood. It’s a balmy afternoon, with the sun still high in the sky at nearly seven o’clock and just a few clouds disappearing off the horizon. It’s the kind of place where you want to relax in one of the salons and admire the view, a glass of chilled Chablis in hand. I enthusiastically grab the wine list from our waitress who shares my preference for French dry white wine. “Here we are: Chablis. How much is 620 Danish kroner?”. Dr K quickly checks the exchange rate and replies crisply: “How much is the Chilean white?”.
