Posts tagged ‘Merlin’

Transcendence, Excalibur and how Britons forgot how to make steel

I like to have at least a couple of books on the go at all times and two of my current crop – ‘Transcendence’ by Gaia Vince and Bernard Cornwell’s ‘Enemy of God’ – have provoked an unlikely fusion of ideas: was King Arthur’s unbreakable sword, Excalibur, a mythic expression of the lost art of Roman steel-making? Did Merlin wield ‘magic’ by exploiting the human brain’s ability to convert mental anticipation into physical reality?

Merlin

Cycling down a wooded cut through to Groesffordd yesterday we disturbed a sleek, grey raptor, who wheeled suddenly in front of us and then swept up the path at high speed, flying just inches above the ground. It was a breathtaking display and with such characteristics could only have been one bird – the usually elusive Merlin.