Shakespeare for absolute beginners

In lieu of a blog post, here are some pages from my art journals, some recent, some dating back to before I came to Oxford. I have never been a diary writer (and I have tried, so hard), but somehow the visual medium has always worked better for me. I draw (sometimes even well), make collages and glue in pictures that inspire me or somehow catch the mood I’m in. I’ve been notebooking for years – at Christmas when staying in my childhood home I counted six thick notebooks. Some drawings, mostly short stories from that period. The present book is down to its last 20 or so pages, the flamingo-printed cover tatty, the back broken, the thickness about double to what it was. There are coffee stains on the edges, and I have drawn birds with black and white markers on the front cover. Inside of the back cover is covered in gilding paste. The whole thing is held together with an elastic band. It is, in short, perfection.