Much of the authentic background detail for the first part of Brushstrokes in Time came through interviewing the artist Qu Leilei. In my second novel to be published early in 2019 the detail is from my own life. It is
Because of the rise in empire nostalgia, knowing the truth about the brutality of empire is important. Our schools don’t teach empire and most Brits know little and what they do know is coloured by ideas of benevolent patriarchy. In
India's lost emperor Ashoka set about governing India by moral force alone! He renounced violence including the death penalty and this was Before Christ ! Ashoka turned Buddhism from a minor sect into a world religion but his name was cleansed
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05b5fdg It’s a welcome change for the BBC to focus on the partition of India. For too long the only history we get is the Tudors, WW1 and WW2. Almost ignored are the Industrial Revolution and the Empire which
Partition voices: British Indians tell the story of the trauma of the partition of India. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08z9p9w For the Madras Courier I tell the story of my Hindu husband’s family’s experience of partition and voice the opinion that the British Government washed
Theresa May is right in saying Islamist attacks have one thing in common : an evil ideology. Silence as to where that ideology came from is to continue despite the government having the facts at their fingertips. Karren Brady on
http://madrascourier.com/opinion/can-india-and-pakistan-overcome-partition/ This opinion piece of mine mentions the poet Ghalib .The irony is that the sensuality of Ghalib’s poetry would not be admired by today’s radical Muslims, who champion a form of pleasure-despising Islam a million miles from the tolerant,
A coup for Chinese New Year! Exclusive interview for Oxfordshire Limited Edition with one of the founders of the Stars Art movement the courageous Qu Leilei. Ai Weiwei, Ma Desheng, Wang Keping and Li Shuang are among his fellow Stars.
I feel privileged. My thirty first castaway, Ray Foulk, was the man responsible for stealing Bob Dylan from Woodstock (NY) and luring him to the Isle of Wight. For a few days in 1969 the eyes of the world were
Review of Royal Academy exhibition Weekend 2007 (I am currently writing an Anglo Indian novel inspired by the idea of rediscovering lost history. Many of these sensuous sculptures were destroyed and others lost. ) The skills of that master of