As a child I’d love to flick through coffee table books featuring birds eye views of the world below, shot from the window of an aeroplane or even a space craft. Today, birds eye views come cheap, thanks to drone technology, but I’m still drawn to these familiar but altered images, where people, traffic, and buildings become part of a Gulliver’s World. There’s a good example on p.27 featuring the Victorious Festival sat on a rugged apron of land with thousands of people reduced to minuscule dots. Closer to the ground we have a beautiful house that features a sub-topical garden in Welcome Home (p.8), while Daniel Nowland encourages us all to shop local and to buy British produce (p.34). Finally, Emma Beatty has found an unlikely link between the 1960s band Manfred Mann and the artist My Dog Sighs, but maybe, just maybe, if we take a view of the world from above, we can see how we are all inter-connected? Kevin John Dean
