Welcome to the final Digest of 2025!
✨The Genius Loci Digest will be back again on the 9th January✨
Coming next year: In Pursuit of Spring
Next year I’ll be travelling the full length of Britain - from John O’Groats to Land’s End - following the season’s unfolding from north to south.
Inspired by Edward Thomas’s celebrated book of the same name, I’ll visit some of our most ancient and sacred landscapes along the way - as well as many of my most loved buildings. It will be a journey into light and renewal - a deliberate counterweight to darker days.
Seasonal Georgian Gothik in Ludlow, Shropshire.
“I have looked down across the city from high windows. It is then that the great buildings lose reality and take on their magical powers. They are immaterial; that is to say, one sees but the lighted windows. Squares after squares of flame, set and cut into the Aether.
Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.”
― Ezra Pound
Edinburgh Twilight
I’m up in Edinburgh again – standing on that familiar line of latitude that loosely binds this city to others like Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo. They are all places that experience delightfully graduated and incremental twilights. It’s a kind of slow light that gently beds you into the evening. Edinburgh in the winter is a place where the day needs to linger awhile before letting go.
I’ve come here not to rush, but to take the city as it presents itself – the warmth spilling from doorways, the people gathered behind glass, and, of course, the twilight.
I’m here to be creative, to engage with the genius loci, the people and place - to photograph and to sketch.
The twilight hour is when the city softens its edges and something quite wonderful begins to happen. These are moments held in balance, suspended between work and rest, outward motion and inward contemplation. Edinburgh allows it to drift between vennel and voussoir, along pavements into basements and up into the dormers where the evening is beginning to settle.
Twilight is not an ending, but a hinge. A moment of becoming. A pause in which imagination is given room to breathe, and the city reveals something of its inner life.
At twilight, the city’s mass begins to soften. Buildings lose their insistence. What remains is light – lingering in windows, gathered in rooms, floating in layers. Geometry gives way to glow. Form gives way to fashion. The city becomes less about weight and more about atmosphere.
At this hour, within these historic walls, I feel as though I am being embraced within a duvet of light.
We are between the public face of day and the private rituals of evening. A thinned out place where the present moment feels divinely elastic. Condensation gathers on glass. Breath becomes visible. Colour temperatures shift – warm ambers are cheek by jowl to the deepening blue.
This is the voyeur’s hour where private worlds are released into the public domain. The sparkle of a chandelier. A table set. A figure paused mid-thought. A conversation unfolding behind a window. The city becomes permeable. We glimpse others going about their lives much as we do – their habits, their affections, their small end-of-day reckonings. We see ourselves reflected in the lives of strangers.
There is comfort in this – a subtle reassurance. We are not alone in our routines or our worries. Others, too, are making their way from day into night.
Inside, the light clings.
It pools and settles – an ambient glow that speaks of shelter and bonhomie. Lamps draw circles around tables and faces. Glass gathers and pools the light. Against the cool blues of the street, the interior light throws out translucent, luminous edges – softened forms that cradle the activity within.
And so I let the light fade gently – sitting beneath a lamp in a small Enoteca in Stockbridge.
Whilst sketching the scene before me with a glass of wine to hand, I find myself looking back through the year just gone – the miles traced out in Woody, the places held, the people met, the seasons crossed. A sense of gratitude settles in – for the journey itself, and for those who have travelled with me – reading, supporting, and helping keep this work alive.
It feels like a good place to pause – held between the magic that we have seen and the wonder yet to come.
Thank You So Much For Your Support
I'm so grateful
Festive Edinburgh (Pure Scroll)
Stockbridge Seasonal Market
I lodged at Edinburgh Caravan and Motorhome Campsite - electric hookup, warm showers, friendly staff.
Andy Marshall
It felt as though the twilight had cast a spell. During the few days I spent in this warm, welcoming city, I found myself compelled to capture it on paper — anywhere and everywhere — from the smallest details to the broad panoramas. Every artist knows the sensation: that rare alignment when everything clicks, and the work seems to flow effortlessly from your fingertips.
My All Time Best Pubs - updated..
Andy Marshall
A favourite of 2025
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Andy Marshall
Twilight Ludlow
Andy Marshall
Festive Knaresborough
Andy Marshall
For Members – a glimpse of what’s coming next – in your inbox on Tuesday 23 December
Kind words from a subscriber:
Andy your work is becoming wonderful, remarkable. A so-called breakdown has been milled into its constituent parts, becoming profound construction: through perception, architecture, the lens and the pen. In your Repton crypt essay a deep description of our social anxiety - and our reason to be....
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Andy Marshall
And finally — thank you for reading, for your kindness, and for travelling alongside me through these pages. I wish you a gentle close to the year, and all the very best for the days ahead.
Members will receive an update on Tuesday 23 December.
See you on the 9th January 2026.
Thank You!
Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with iPhone 17 Pro and DJI Mini 5 Pro.
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