Thoughts about things I’ve written or read or heard or seen. An attempt to stay positive in a turbulent world.
Recent Articles
Words on Writing, and Pass on a Poem
There are hundreds of thousands of words written about writing fiction: how to write, why we write, what to do when we can’t write and on and on so that, sometimes, I feel as if I’m adrift on a sea of advice. But at other times wise words become the lifeboat that takes me safely back...Continue reading→
Auditioning to become a WI Speaker, and ‘BORN BAFFLED: Musings on a Writing Life’
In March I auditioned to become a WI speaker. The WI, you say? Don’t they just make jam, sing Jerusalem and talk a lot? Yes to all three, but no to JUST. There are 6,300 WIs in this country with 220,000 members and their community interests and campaigns have a long reach and are extremely varied. They campaign...Continue reading→
Spring in London, and The Kid Stays in the Picture
Spring in London is an astonishing thing: blossom among the grey buildings and pavements; green and blue and pink and white making us look up at it and then at each other and smile, us Londoners who spend most of our time walking around looking at the pavement (or the now-ubiquitous technology in our hands), making...Continue reading→
A History of Britain in 21 Women, by Jenni Murray
This is both the thing I’m writing about this month and the thing I’d love to have written, in a parallel universe where time is infinite and all things are possible:What an entirely brilliant and inspiring idea. It begins with Boadicea, not Boudicca, because: To me … she will always be Boadicea because I was...Continue reading→
Anselm Kiefer and Heywood Hill
On the weekend we went to the Anselm Kiefer Exhibition at the White Cube in Bermondsey. It’s just closed, but if there’s any of his work anywhere near you do go and see it. He is the most imaginative of artists. He sees with a keen but compassionate eye: several of his works made me...Continue reading→
John Berger, Ways of Seeing … and PEN International
John Berger, who died aged 90 on January 2nd, was a critic, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and poet and well-known to many. Occasionally, in his early writings according to this Guardian obituary, Berger’s ‘Marxist dialectic did force him into uncomfortable contortions’, but whenever I heard him or read his fiction I loved his originality and his extraordinary ability to make the...Continue reading→
Dare Always Dare, and Guerilla Grafters
A friend pointed out to me a week or so ago that this: DARE ALWAYS DARE is written in neon above the foyer entrance to the Old Vic Theatre (no idea why I’d never noticed it before): And so we should, if only we could, all the time. But I think it’s good enough to DARE SOMETIMES...Continue reading→
Third novel, and the Reith Lectures, 2016
This month I finished my third novel. Finished to be interpreted loosely: there will be redrafts when I’m working with an agent and then with an editor. It’s working title is For the Love of Life. Rejoice. At least for now. But now, while I do all the things I haven’t had time to do (updating...Continue reading→
Rose Tremain’s The Gustav Sonata and Dioni Mazaraki’s silver jewellery
I’ve read all Rose Tremain‘s novels and I love the fact that they fail to fit neatly into any particular category (except the category of beautifully written stories about the way we are and how we become). They’re always and essentially different, one from the next. I read The Gustav Sonata on holiday and, perhaps because the usual daily...Continue reading→
Theresa May, the Queen and Boris Johnson and, more seriously, Kent Haruf
A friend of mine sent me this sometime after the Brexit Bungle: There’s not much else to say, is there? On a much more serious note (and far wiser, kinder, more compassionate and life-enhancing), I read Kent Haruf (to rhyme with Sheriff)’s Our Souls at Night on holiday recently, on the recommendation of dovegreyreader and, in a parallel...Continue reading→
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