...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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
(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