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.
Language
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
Hamlet on the Titanic
This 15th April is the 113th anniversary of the night RMS Titanic sank. My great-grandmother, Noël Rothes, was, ‘One of the lucky ones’, as she wrote three days later. Lucky not only because she survived, but because none of her beloved menfolk had sailed from Southampton with her. If they had, they would have died in … 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
Language: how it means everything, and nothing
A couple of weeks ago some friends suggested we see ENGLISH, by Sanaz Toossi, at the Kiln Theatre. It’s finished its run now, but if you see it advertised anywhere, go. Toossi wrote the play after the travel ban, colloquially known as the Muslim Ban – ‘a licence to discriminate, disguised as a “national security … Read More