Michelle Mone is a thief. She should be in prison. She’s not. She’s either swanning through the House of Lords in ermine or disported on a luxury yacht in a bathing costume in the seas around one of the fiscal paradises in the Caribbean. With a successful business selling knickers and bras, she was made […]
Category Archives: Blog
SALVADOR DALI AND RELIGION
Salvador Dalí and religion never made a good fit. It is hardly surprising, then, that in 1935, aged thirty-one, Dalí created his own belief system and wrote a letter to André Breton outlining his proposition – a religion without God. That letter, lost for eighty-seven years, has finally turned up in the Breton archive. André […]
BOB DYLAN PLAYS LITTLE RICHARD
Bobby turned on the radio late one night in 1957 and the sound of Little Richard hammering out Tutti Frutti over over the airwaves changed his life. Tutti frutti, oh rootie / Tutti frutti, oh rootie, ooh Next day in the storeroom at the back of his father’s appliance store in Hibbing, Minnesota, he blew the dust off […]
THE ENEMY OF THE UNLIVED MEANINGLESS LIFE
I’m the enemy of the unlived meaningless life. This line struck me like the unexpected blow with the cane Zen teachers use to spark fire in the souls of acolytes on the edge of Nirvana. I thought: who am I? Where have I been? Where am I going? Has my own life been full and worthy, […]
WHAT IS SOCIAL MURDER?
Social murder is a phrase applied to changes in government policy that lead to greater poverty and result in anxiety, suicide and early death. The perfect example of social murder is the stance taken by the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne – both members of the elite Bullingdon Club – […]
THE HIDDEN HILLS OF CADAQUES
1984. Late spring. Armed with a hand-drawn map, a bag of figs and some tangerines, we set out to climb what our friend Eloy Ferrer had called the hidden hills of Cadaqués. The journey by train from Barcelona to Figueres took two hours and two more over the Big Dipper of a road with the bus fishtailing […]
WHY THE DALAI LAMA HAS AN ENGLISH ACCENT
The Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950 claiming the country was part of greater China. Nomadic warriors called Khambas, armed with swords, fought a guerrilla war against the Chinese for a decade. They attacked columns of armoured cars on horseback and shot up bomber planes with Lee Enfield rifles. The Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibet, […]
YOU’RE A LONG TIME DEAD
When dad took a second slice of cake or spent more time in the garden in the hot sun than mum thought wise, he would say: Don’t worry, Lily, you’re a long time dead. My dad was always cheerful and curious, always interested in what I was doing. He was proud when I became a […]
GEORGE ORWELL AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
It was the day after Christmas in 1936 when George Orwell stepped off the train in Barcelona and followed his map to the recruiting office of the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista), where he volunteered to fight for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. What little I knew about the war before we […]
THE ORIGINS OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
I knew nothing about the origins of the Spanish Civil War until we moved to Barcelona in 1984. General Franco had been dead nine years but his shadow loomed still over Spain like a cloud over the sun. My wife Valerie had been offered a position at the British Council in Barcelona and we rented […]