Thoughts about things I’ve written or read or heard or seen. An attempt to stay positive in a turbulent world.
Recent Articles
Beloved Books for Valentine’s Day, and the Libraro Prize
Here are seven books I love, for Valentine’s Day: * Pincher Martin by William Golding – for his entirely unexpected ending * Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine – for her poetic honesty about racism * Possession by AS Byatt – because Byatt allows her academics to be fully human (they fall in love...
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...Continue reading→
Give Care-Experienced Children Joy, through Reading this Christmas
The Reader – the brilliant charity that organises reading aloud with thousands of adults and children in places like cafès, libraries, hospitals and prisons – is running an appeal this Christmas for donations for Reading Heroes. Donations will: Recruit, train and support volunteers...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
Black History Month & Standing Proudly
Black History Month’s theme in the UK is Standing Firm in Power and Pride Paulette Hamilton, Labour MP for Birmingham Erdington writes: This year’s theme … is deeply personal to me, not just as Birmingham’s first Black MP, but as a woman who has dedicated her life to fighting for health equity in our communities....Continue reading→
Red Line for Gaza: why does the UK government still sell arms to Israel?
On Saturday 6 September a couple of friends and I marched in support of Red Line for Gaza. The march was organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (not to be confused with the UK government’s proscribed Palestine Action). This report suggests there were 300,000 of us; this one that there were 20,000. Certainly thousands marched...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
DAISY REFLECTIONS
Sometimes all I want to do is stand and stare ...Continue reading→
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,...Continue reading→
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...Continue reading→
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