The shadowy and superficially unpromising history of European countries (in an age before either ‘Europe’ or ‘countries’ really existed) was implicitly a story which would inevitably foreshadow the triumph of the West.

I had not imagined that my obsessive search for twenty years for a hundred-and-fifty-some-year-old grave would teach me something about the meaning of history.

Womad is not having a mid-life crisis, but maybe it should. After two years of Covid-induced hibernation, the World of Music, Arts and Dance festival returned to the grounds of Charlton Park in Wiltshire, England in the summer of 2021 celebrating its fortieth year.