Letter from Europe
Archive: 2025
About this blog
Our Letter from Europe is published about once a month and reports on issues of culture and travel.
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Paul Scraton explores how cities reinvent themselves, taking inspiration from Łódź in Poland where a cutting-edge film industry has documented the city's transition from an industrial to a post-industrial era. Across Europe, media spaces are filling the urban wastelands left when the mills and mines close.
Finding homeplace: travelling with Seamus Heaney
Triggered by a visit to the Seamus Heaney HomePlace - an exhibition dedictated to the poet in Bellaghy in Ireland's County Derry - Paul Scraton ponders the meaning of place in the context of 'home'. Do we not take with us a keen appreciation of our personal home places on our lifelong journey?
Out of the ruins: in search of the old Magdeburg
Paul Scraton explores the German city of Magdeburg armed with a map from 1910. Largely rebuilt after the Second World War, Magdeburg's streetscape has greatly changed. The old map is not ideal for navigating the city, but it offers rich insights into the history of Magdeburg.