On the basis of indicative votes, we now know what Parliament wants, or rather, what it doesn’t want to do with Brexit, which is anything. There is a distinct absence, a lack, a void. It’s great for nihilists but no one else. We are no nearer a resolution to Britain’s current crisis than we were […]
I remember the first time I saw “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. I was visiting the Cheshire town of Wilmslow, and it was being shown in an old movie theatre in the centre of town. I speculated that the theatre hadn’t changed much since the 1920’s: the seats were worn, and the floors were sticky […]
The last emperor of the Western Roman Empire was arguably Romulus Augustulus, whose reign began in 475 and ended in 476. He was deposed by the Germanic barbarian chieftain Odoacer; according to legend, the warlord “took pity on (Augustulus’s) youth” and let him live. I’ve always wondered what the people around Romulus Augustulus thought; did […]
Sometimes it takes an outsider’s point of view to see a situation more clearly. Recently, the New Yorker magazine starkly showed how the United Kingdom is now viewed by the rest of the world. On its cover was a rendering of Big Ben: its venerable dial was open, and a hysterical cuckoo had popped out. […]
I am not a fan of the Amazon series “Transparent”; I live in a country whose government is presently going through a nervous breakdown, so watching the neuroses of others played out on a screen is an unlikely form of entertainment. Also, the revelations about Jeffrey Tambor’s conduct towards women makes the programme less than […]
I'm a Doctor of both Creative Writing and Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, a novelist, a technologist, and still an amateur in much else.
