A New Dawn

A New Dawn

My friend Glenn Bradley has written this political (and personal) feature reflecting on the disaster that is Brexit, the failures of 2017 and his wishes for a new dawn in 2018. A New Dawn This time last year I sat in the Eastside Visitors Centre chatting with a dear...
Arms And The Man

Arms And The Man

Today in 1989 playwright Václav Havel became President of Czechoslovakia. Two years later, in June 1991, I write about him in a letter to my partner which appears in my book, Then The Walls Came Down: 29 June 1991 I read a review of Open Letters by Vaclav Havel, the...
The Cover-Up

The Cover-Up

A British intelligence officer, Ginge, is lying in hospital in England after just about surviving a booby-trap bomb which exploded under his car outside his cottage near the former coal-mining village of Bloodworth. It is 1994, just months before the IRA ceasefire...
Hidden Wounds

Hidden Wounds

I saw on Twitter today for the first time the testimony of a clearly traumatised and disturbed Israeli soldier, Ido Gal Razon, who killed over forty Palestinians in Gaza. It can be seen here Shortly, I’ll be reviewing a novel by a former British soldier Aly...
Essays in Contractions

Essays in Contractions

Alain de Botton can be a very witty and thought-provoking writer, especially the way he weaves philosophical thought into his books. Essays in Love (1993) was his first novel, written when he was just twenty-three, and it is hilarious from a mildly sadistic point of...