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
The Fifties: Don't romanticise them not even on Valentine’s Day! Yesterday, I watched two one act plays by Terrence Rattigan at the Oxford Playhouse. They took me back to the fifties like a time machine! When I interviewed Sir Roger
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0028401 How do ideas spread, consciously and unconsciously? Has Stephen Mangan seen a copy of Oxford Castaways? His new comedy show THE ISLAND envisages Desert Island Disc castaways on the same island having to rub along together. That is
They marched under this banner - 'In Politics we want Democracy and in Art Freedom' 1989 ? NO
In todays i Yasmin Alibhai Brown writes about British Citizens of Pakistani ancestry and how they regard the grooming gangs. The conclusion was that most people of that background despise them and are distressed by the suffering of the exploited
Simon Schama and I https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0026zyn/simon-schamas-story-of-us-series-1-2-whose-britain-is-it-anyway I may not have Simon Schama’s brains and erudition but, watching episode 2 of 'Whose Britain is it any way' made me realise that we share the same attitude to the evolution of this
I love the Today programme during the Christmas period, when it has guest editors. Their choice of in depth subject matter is inspirational. First off was author and screenwriter, Frank Cottrell Boyce, on a subject dear to my heart -
Andy Severn, James Harrison Ray Foulk and I had a dream of an event for book lovers which was free to enter, welcoming of everyone whatever their age or background. I tell the story of how it all
Today I weep for Ukraine and the environment. I really don’t understand my fellow human beings. What a terrible confession for an author! Many young black men voted for a racist. Many ‘Latinos’ voted for a man who builds a
Yesterday, in Ely Cathedral, I took this photograph. In the exquisite Lady Chapel, all the heads had been knocked off the sculptures in the niches. I visited the Fragrant Buddha Temple in the Summer Palace in Beijing with the