Thoughts about things I’ve written or read or heard or seen. An attempt to stay positive in a turbulent world.
Recent Articles
Black History Month, and David Olusoga
October is Black History Month in the UK, but David Olusoga, historian and broadcaster, and many many others, including me, think it’s well past time that British history included everyone who’s part of the UK’s history wherever it’s taught, read or written about. Our history is a shared history, a history that belongs to all...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
Independence Day: two dissenting points of view
Independence Day, celebrated in America on the fourth of July, commemorates the Declaration of Independence, ratified on the fourth of July 1776. It stated that the: Thirteen Colonies were no longer subject (and subordinate) to the British monarch, George III, and were now united, free, and independent states. Freedom from a colonial power and freedom...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
What does it mean to be good?
In a 2013 article by Steve Taylor PhD in Psychology Today, good is defined as: a lack of self-centredness … the ability to empathise with other people, feel compassion … and put [others’] needs before your own. It means … sacrificing your own well-being for the sake of others. It means benevolence, altruism and selflessness,...Continue reading→
Tom Titanic: a Welsh hero remembered
On 15 April I went to Cemaes, the northernmost town on the Ynys Môn coast, with my cousin Alex Leslie, and my sister Lucinda Mackworth-Young. We were there because Cemaes is the town where Thomas William Jones was born, on 15 November 1877. Tom Titanic, as he’s remembered in Cemaes, was put in command of...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
Let Love Grow Food this Valentine’s Day
Concern Worldwide is a charity that ‘goes to the ends of earth to deliver aid where it’s needed most’. They’re working in Turkey and Syria right now. And they’ve got a Valentine’s Day campaign that suggests buying a cow for a loved one: or planting an avocado tree for a loved one: or buying a...Continue reading→
Kindness
In Matt Haig’s The Comfort Book – reflections on hope, survival and the messy business of being alive – he writes: Life is short. Be kind. A beautiful thing to be. (The Comfort Book is also beautiful, full of ‘consolatons and suggestions for making bad days better’. I was given mine for Chrstimas … why...Continue reading→
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