Please say NOT IN MY NAME
These inhumane times are hard to bear. It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of evil. There is one thing we can all do and that is to say or express, in any form we prefer, NOT IN MY
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02, 2026
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01, 2026
The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India – dry sounding but incredible! As others see Us
The need to tell the WHOLE story of Empire. The reason our country looks the way it does is because of Empire and it's not taught enough in schools or universities. We can’t properly understand this country without knowing about
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11, 2025
The tables turned & Oxford Lives interviewed ME!
...and my life in one picture thanks to the artist Diana Bell. Last week I was interviewed for Oxford Lives by Jeremy Allen and Graeme Fry produced this podcast from the interview. https://oxfordlives.libsyn.com/oxford-lives-episode-69-with-sylvia-vetta For ten years, I wrote the life
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11, 2025
Writing ‘Reptiles’ evoked memories of Bagley Wood
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/4430842.run-bagley-wood/? Reptiles, my latest novel starts with Toad Patrol in Bagley Woods. In this pic, I’m wear my high viz jacket but the month wasn’t appropriate, the amphibians move at the end of February and in March. This
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10, 2025
Making HISTORY and friendship across continents.
https://www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/news/25522672.kennington-twin-village-africa-weekend/ I am proud of my village. On Saturday there will be plenty of red, white and blue bunting mixed with Kenyan red, green and black. Flags for what they are meant to be used for, celebration and hope
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09, 2025
Ai Weiwei and the Stars Art Movement
https://howtoacademy.com/events/ai-weiwei-on-censorship/ Ai Weiwei began his career with the Stars artists (Beijing 1979 ) In the UK, we don’t expect an art exhibition to be closed by the police but that is what happened to the Stars unofficial exhibition in Beijing.
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09, 2025
Meeting Giorgio!
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
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08, 2025
Stand up for the young people wrongly charged with terrorist offences.
Stand up for the young people wrongly charged with terrorist offences. The activists who broke into the RAF facility at Brize Norton knew, that their actions were illegal. Political resistance such as the suffragettes, the gay rights movement, anti-apartheid and
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08, 2025
Why was India’s greatest ruler & the destruction of the great library at Nalanda forgotten for 1000 years ?
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
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06, 2025
Anglo Indians : Prejudice and my own experience of it .
https://madrascourier.com/insight/anglo-indians-a-story-of-hybridity-music-legacy/ This feature in today's Madras Courier rightly celebrates the legacy of Anglo- Indians in India. The White Mughals who traded with India before Empire were exploitative and greedy but they were not racist. They enjoyed the Indian way of