Meeting Giorgio! https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/italian-fashion-designer-giorgio-armani-dies-91-2025-09-04/ Today the death was announced of Giorgio Armani. What’s my connection with the fashion designer? My journey to becoming a novelist began when I took up freelance writing for magazines mostly about art, antiques and books. The
Sculpting the Elephant is part located in Oxford where I live, especially in the former industrial and working class areas of Jericho and St Thomas's but is set when Jericho was gentrifying and the Oxford Rock scene had started to
I wrote this blog in 2020 but am returning to it because, in 2025, the world needs GOOD GOVERNANCE and hope that change, in the interests of humanity, is possible. Today the Madras Courier published an opinion piece by me
What a week for copies of my latest book Reptiles to arrive! The book opens with Toad Patrol an annual rescue of amphibians as they cross the Old Abingdon Road . Many from my village take part including me
(See the programme at the bottom of the blog) I’m one if the organisers of the Oxford Indie Book Fair. Our fairs are in Oxford in the University Examinations Halls and, on July 13, as the last event of the
We need hope in these dark times and Confluence Collective founded by Malcolm Atkins and friends never fails. I wrote a poem celebrating how the group bring creative people from every community together, from India and Pakistan from Ethiopia and
On May 10, I'll talk about the importance of telling your story. Yesterday was the funeral of the former The Oxford Times food writer, chef, author and drama critic, Helen Peacocke. The Humanist celebrant, Ian Wilcox used
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NvrzUnGE50 I had sad news today. An old colleague at the Oxford Tines, Helen Peacock, has died. Helen was the food writer for the paper for 25 years. I had to cast her away! She was born in Eynsham and
Today, March 19.2025, the composer of the day on BBC Radio 3 was the first celebrated female American composer, Ruth Crawford Seeger, the mother of Mike and Peggy and stepmother of Pete, who sang at Obama's inauguration. I had the
Laurie Lee grew up not far from Carterton where I’ll talk memoir on March 4. The audience will know the PLACE but not the TIME. Following my interviews of Ray Foulk and Roger Bannister for the Oxford Castaway series, both