To go alongside my new book, The Guardian has commissioned an article from me about the history of the nocturne. You can read the article here and it should be in the print edition tomorrow, Wednesday 1 April.
One nice thing about online articles is that they can include several illustrations for which there isn’t room in the print edition. Thus the online version is headed with a lovely Whistler nocturne painting – which also appears in the book.
There are other photos too – including a good one I hadn’t seen before of a Max Richter performance. I wonder which photos, if any, will accompany the print version?
That’s the advantage of digital media – there’s space to slot in relevant extra material when appropriate. The downside is that it encourages some people to great verbosity, with the result that one often gives up on their interminable post altogether!
In fact, I’ve now learned that my article isn’t going to be in the print edition. Less and less goes into the print edition, it seems, though for me the print edition will always be The Real Thing. I’ve had so many years of collecting the actual newspapers and storing the cuttings in folders!
That’s a pity but the article will still have been widely read. Like you I continue to see print as the real world and digital as an appendix. It’s the same with television – to me BBC and ITV are “It”, and the rest is just a little extra! Not exactly the way the young see things, but it’s hard to shake off the world one grew up with…
When I was spending the majority of my working day online, I relished print but also audiobooks and podcasts for resting my eyes. Even though I’m retired I now need the accessibility features of digital. My eyes just can’t handle small print.
Good point, Paula – that resting the eyes is important. I too find that if the print is too small, I don’t feel like reading the book.