UPSTREAM

Have just started John McMillan’s latest novel Upstream. It’s the story of a married couple living in the West Country (south west England) told from the perspective of the husband Jim Mitchell, a struggling author. Thoroughly enjoyed his other books The Soul of the...

Reflections on WWI

In Cork on Wednesday night – 11th November – I was proud to be invited to speak at the launch in the City Library of Conal Creedon’s biography of Michael O’Leary, a Victoria Cross recipient from County Cork. Conal had also asked me would I...

Hillsborough Agreement, 1985

Interviewed this afternoon by BBC television journalist Mark Simpson about my reflections on the Anglo-Irish Agreement which was signed this day thirty years ago. My opinion hasn’t changed: Thatcher’s aim was to secure increased cross-border security...

The Last Jews in Berlin

I read this book, The Last Jews In Berlin, whilst staying at a writers’ residential at Wannsee lake within view of Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, the villa where in 1942 the Nazis planned the extermination of European Jewry. In fact, when I finished the book I cycled...

‘I Am A German’

A Stranger in My Own Country: The 1944 Prison Diary by Hans Fallada has been described as, ‘An outspoken memoir of life under the Nazis written from a prison cell’ (Independent), but which has also been viewed as an apologia because Fallada decided to live in Nazi...