A couple of weeks ago my other half took me to Hadestown. Both of us are somewhat beyond our allotted three score years and ten so we were expecting to be deafened by the music (we’d read that we would be …). So, first of all, never believe what people say/write about a thing until you’ve experienced it for yourself (we weren’t once deafened) and, secondly (but this really should be first) whatever your age, go to Hadestown whenever it’s on near you.
Creativity
Hospital Reading
I’ve recently spent two short spells in hospital where a lot of waiting happens. So I caught up with some wonderful books. In no particular order, they are: Kin, Tayari Jones; Vigil, George Saunders; The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt; The Surgeon’s House, Jody Cooksley; Gloria Don’t Speak, Lucy Apps
14 Wonderful Women for International Women’s Day
8 March was the 115th International Women’s Day so, a few days later, on the 14th, here are 14 Wonderful Women.
And, close to UK Mother’s Day, one particular mother. There’s a magician, an actor, a writer, a chief midwife, a scientist, an architect, a facilitator for parents and their children, an inventor of a glorious body oil, an inventor of delicious snacks, a composer, a truth-seeker for racial justice, an MP, a painter, a footballer. and a mention for my Mum.
Beloved Books for Valentine’s Day, and the Libraro Prize
Here are seven books I love, for Valentine’s Day and if you love reading (and/or writing) there’s a new competition: the Libraro Prize 2026.
Let’s get them all reading
If you were encouraged to read as a child and developed a lifelong love of reading, you’re lucky. Reading turned me into a writer and writing always sends me back to reading. But I know I’m lucky. According to The National Literacy Trust’s 2025 Annual Literacy Survey the number of children and young people who … Read More
Now A Major Motion Picture, a novel by Peter Wise: for Christmas
If you’re wondering what to buy for the readers in your life for Christmas, can I suggest a gloriously-funny, poignant, heartfelt, beautifully-written novel about the hopes and dreams, ambitions and desires of an unknown screenwriter who gets a call from an Oscar-winning director and dares to believe that, this time, one of his screenplays will … Read More
Samara Joy
In one of the first Proms of this 2025 London Season I heard Samara Joy. I’d never heard her before but she truly is a joy. She’s only twenty-five, her vocal range is amazing and the only sad thing is she’s not planning to come back to Europe for the foreseeable, although she’s got gigs … Read More
The Aristocrat and the Able Seaman will be published in April 2026
For several years I’ve done a talk about Lucy Noël Martha, Countess of Rothes, and Thomas William Jones, the Aristocrat and the Able Seaman who survived Titanic in the same lifeboat. In April, 2026 their stories will be published by The History Press and I’m delighted that the courage of these two people, their kindness, … Read More
In Retrospect, Simon Armitage
In Retrospect The world asks a great deal of the poppies, insists they carry the wounds of war and shoulder the weight of remembrance. Such flimsy, wavering plants; we painted their flowers the colour of blood and punched dark holes in their heads as if bullets had passed through, then trimmed them with green sprigs … Read More
A Valentine to Life: What Does It Feel Like? Sophie Kinsella
Unlike forty-five million people worldwide, I’d never read a Sophie Kinsella novel until I picked up What Does It Feel Like? in my local bookshop a couple of weeks ago. But if, like me, you’re not one of the forty-five million and you think you might never be: read this one. It’s funny. It’s optimistic. … Read More
A Blessing for our times
Jan Richardson wrote this Blessing for her blog The Advent Door in 2014. It’s included in her book Circle of Grace published in 2015. Elsewhere Richardson talks about wild and stubborn hope. I love that phrase. A friend of mine sent Blessing when the World is Ending to me a few days ago. It feels … Read More
Tell Climate Change Stories
On last Tuesday’s The Life Scientific with Jim Al-Khalili, the guest scientist was Professor Peter Stott, a senior climate scientist at The Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services. The biggest challenge in climate science today, Stott said, is whether we can adapt quickly enough to the increasingly dangerous effects of climate change … Read More
ORIGIN: Ava DuVernay and Isabel Wilkerson on CASTE
If you haven’t seen ORIGIN – Ava DuVernay’s film about Isabel Wilkerson’s life and why and how she came to write CASTE – I urge you to. If you have seen it, I’d love to know how it made you feel, what it made you think and, most importantly, what it made you do or … Read More
An astonishing blind pianist
On Friday 8 September we heard Nobuyuki Tsujii (or Nobu to his many many fans). He played Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto at the penultimate 2023 Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. It was a virtuoso performance of one of the most difficult piano concertos, and it moved me to tears. Nobu was led onto the … Read More
Flowers from a Stone
Flowers that find their way through stone or rock (or any apparently impenetrable surface) always touch my heart. They manage to flourish in the most (apparently) inhospitable places. I’ve been rewriting a novel I thought I’d finished last autumn. But when I couldn’t sell it I did what I should’ve done before I tried to … Read More
Windrush, 75 years on
Seventy-five years ago, on 22 June 1948, HMT (His Majesty’s Transport) Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks, on the River Thames. She was named, as many empire ships were, for a British river, in her case the River Windrush, a small Thames tributary. Windrush brought 492 passengers to Britain from several Caribbean islands including Jamaica … Read More
Older women: Elder, not elderly
It’s getting close to mother’s day here in the UK (here’s a list of mother’s day dates worldwide) and that set me thinking about women and the different stages of our lives … and, naturally enough, Sheila Hancock. In a 2022 Guardian interview about her book Old Rage (brilliant title) and her life, Hancock talks … Read More
Redemption Song
A couple of weeks ago I saw the Bob Marley musical, Get Up Stand Up! in London. It’s glorious, it’s uplifting, I felt sound waves, like a breeze, against my body; it’s brilliantly sung and acted, it’s very moving and it tells, among many incidents from Marley’s life, how he and The Wailers went to … Read More
Ask not what trees can do for us, but what we can do for trees
Last weekend I walked through a wood. Sunlight filtered through the leaves and made me think how medieval stonemasons must have been inspired by the branches of trees gathered in arching vaults above them when they imagined their cathedrals. In a modern reversal, in Italy, near Bergamo, there’s a tree cathedral: And, at the entrance … Read More
Queenhood by Simon Armitage
I’m not a monarchist nor a royalist but I am – as Helen Mirren said, recently – a Queenist. This country’s Queen, Queen Elizabeth II, is an extraordinary woman whose seventy years as head of state was celebrated in the UK between 2 and 5 June 2022. Her example of dedication, faith, hard work, duty, leadership … Read More