The ‘best tip’ idiomatic phrase is usually a shorthand for allowing people who can afford to spend more of their private income to spend considerably less. Out of this fascination for cheapness for the relatively well endowed financially comes the fact that the true costs of environmentally polluting practices are not paid by those who … More Who is paying for your cheap air travel?
What’s the longest trip you’ve ever taken? View all responses Stories that stay mainly in one place can often travel further imaginatively – using dimensions in outward and inward space, time and the motility of focal choice in the the storytelling. This is a blog on the film Pressure directed and edited by Anthony Maras … More Stories that stay mainly in one place can often travel further imaginatively – dimensions in space, time and the imagination of mobility in the storytelling. This is a blog on the film ‘Pressure’ directed and edited by Anthony Maras and written by Maras and David Haig, based on Haig’s 2014 stage play.
Should I choose a week of his life which offered no return to a present in which I had no faith in myself? Being Sydney Carton being …? Much lies behind my answer: many liesIndeed!Lies informed my life till that timeWhen weeks could not be spent in hearing criesI’d rather leave unheard: in fact that … More Should I choose a week of his life which offered no return to a present in which I had no faith in myself? Being Sydney Carton being …?
Colm Tóibín is a true writer of the heart but not from it, except in as much as hearts seem to beat on when there reasons for doing so, in the myth that the heart is the centre of emotional attachments or longing for such have not yet been initiated or have long gone. Later … More Although you never ever regret reading Colm Tóibín’s books, you may regret ‘The Bridge’ for raising the hope that ‘A Long Winter’ for his queer hero, Miquel (the finest of them all) never ends.
‘Be ready for the duplicity of adulthood and adults’ is my advice and it continues thus; ‘and if you can, learn how not to collude whilst you learn, as you must, to survive’. This blog is a reflection on the film ‘Bad Apples’ (2025) directed by Jonatan Etzler and starring the very wondrous Saoirse Ronan. … More ‘Be ready for the duplicity of adulthood and adults’ is my advice and it continues thus; ‘and if you can, learn how not to collude whilst you learn, as you must, to survive’. This blog is a reflection on the film ‘Bad Apples’ (2025) directed by Jonatan Etzler and starring the very wondrous Saoirse Ronan.
If the salary was the same, what job would you be doing right now and why? In Dean Atta’s first novel intended for adults, ‘Big Man’, the protagonist, Big, explains to new entrants to his profession of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) workers and consultants why he is doing the ‘job he is doing right … More In Dean Atta’s first novel intended for adults, ‘Big Man’, the protagonist, Big, explains to new entrants to his profession of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) workers and consultants why he is doing the ‘job he is doing right now and why’, without mentioning salary: ‘Big told the twenty somethings he enjoyed being freelance because he was neither a boss nor an employee’. This blog is really about Dean Atta (2026) ‘Big Man’ London, Cipher Press.
What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done when no one was watching? Can an action be brave if it is done in secret, unseen? Perhaps it can but only if you in some way also share the fact that you did it with others, as this prompt asks us so to do. Is it true … More Can an action be brave if it is done in secret, unseen, Lady Godiva?
I am turning to the Online Etymological Dictionary today again for this prompt question, although the issues behind any use of the verb ‘raise’ are largely about its implication that the subject of a the transitive verb (see below) ‘raise’ is always in all the examples I can think of (but I’d love to be … More Let’s concentrate on the word ‘raised’ and its rather frightening semantic history, to unpack the assumptions behind answering about how any actions of mine or their mode of occurrence differ from those I was supposedly ‘raised’ to do or not do them.
In looking at drawings and perhaps even serial paintings whether explicitly named versions of a concept, or ‘studies’ or whatever, something the brilliant Lauren Elkin says about the relationship of found drawings of an artist *speaking of those Gwen John made of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and Her Sister and the ultimate form they might … More This is a blog on seeing the Gwen John exhibition in Edinburgh in 2026, using the catalogue edited by Rachel Stratton and Lucy Wood, ‘Gwen John: Strange Beauties’.
What’s the kindest thing someone has ever done for you? Ikram Talaat Ahmed teaches displaced children in Gaza from https://afsc.org/news/courage-and-kindness-amid-loss-gaza Kindness is a strange enough quality I think. It is a word with all its duplicity born in its origins, as Shakespeare noticed when he gives the following dialogue, in a crowded scene (Act 1 … More Kindness is a strange enough quality I think. It is a word with duplicity born in its origins. To be ‘kind’ in truth is to be informed about ‘unkindness’ to those who are in truth still your kind. This blog reflects on Jeremy Corbyn, Neve Gordon and Shahd Hammouri (2026) ‘The Gaza Tribunal: Britain’s Complicity in Genocide’.
Mainly, the only regret I find when I have read a book is that I can’t read it again ‘for the first time’, but it passes! A last day at Edinburgh Book Festival 30th August 2026. I must have been somewhere near Dunbar when I took the photograph from the train that was fast moving … More Mainly, the only regret I find when I have read a book is that I can’t read it again ‘for the first time’, but it passes! A last day at Edinburgh Book Festival 30th August 2026.
In the Epilogue to his book 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia (2026, First paperback edition [first publ. in hardback, 2025], London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson) Phillipe Sands recounts attending a literary festival to promise an earlier book in Valparaiso and being addressed by a reader who had personal … More The most annoying trope in fictional or non-fictional art is that which pretends that, at the end of the book, everything is resolved. This is a blog on ’38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia’ by Philippe Sands which ends in the same ambiguity with which it started, like life itself. Part 2 of a 2 part blog series.
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