Making HISTORY and friendship across continents.
On October 11, Kennington will twin with Musanda in west Kenya. My village will be the second in England to twin with an African village. Musanda looks as if it’s the first village in Kenya to twin with an English village. Four delightful inhabitants of the village were in Kennington at the weekend so we organised a Towards Twinning event. You can see from the pics that it was moving and fun. The choir entertained us and the scouts have become penpals with some children in Musanda. They received their on paper letters and that felt special.
I was the first speaker because I was able to tell the His and HER –story! The twinning was my suggestion but it was made possible by Rev Samson Kuponiyi agreeing to chair the twinning committee and getting the support of the Parish Council. This act of friendship wouldn’t have happened if Kennington hadn’t been the only village in the UK to, every year for 50 years, to raise money for an overseas project. The intention was to show a few minutes of this video (link below) but that didn’t happen. The video was made for a KOA Gala Night to be shown before the folk singer Peggy Seeger and I burst through the door. It celebrated the ways KOA enhanced village life through events like the Bagley Wood Fun Run, the Kids for KOA concerts to encourage music and the First Pop up shop in Oxfordshire which ran every August from 1975 -2018.
https://vimeo.com/64536645 Fifties Fandango
For 40 years, I organised the main social event mostly Gala Nights with a three course meal and musical entertainment (arranged by the much missed Rebecca Alison). But, my first attempt at organising a KOA event, was in 1975 when I produced a one act play by Checkov and, downhill after that, because next up was a trite piece of my own writing A Victorian Musical Extravanganza. It was out of that KADS was born. (KADS being our Am Dram Society.) So, for many, the video brings back good memories.
Then I looked at the scouts as I said,
‘KOA started in 1969 long before you were born -in a time before mobile phones and the internet and before easy travel around the world. It’s because of that history that we are here today preparing to twin with a village in another continent wanting to be friends and to learn from each other. Kennington should be proud of what we achieved in the 50 years of KOA. I am most proud of being involved for 45 years.
When I handed a cheque to the founder of Integrated Village Development Trust, Michael Wright thanked the village saying, ‘Over the years you have undoubtedly changed the lives of more than 100,000 people for the better.’
This little village has made its mark in 3 continents.
The Buildings and infrastructure: The buildings we funded are still working. I often see Tonia Cope Bowley who founded the Thembisa Trust so know the preschool / community centre in KwaZulu Natal is still benefiting the community there. The disability centre for victims of land mines in Cambodia, the library in Bonu, Benin, and the Spirulina production unit in Musanda( PiC behind me) are still operational. My ex- business partner former Kennington resident, Gill Hedge, went to Mali. She described how the electric grain grinders we bought for the women in the 40 villages in Manankoro saved them three hours a day work pounding the grain by hand. The project had transformed lives. The women were enterprising and with the time saved they started market gardens and small businesses and were able to help their children’s education.The water tanks are still on the school roofs in Jinja province in Uganda providing drinking water for the staff and children. The toilets high in the Andes in Peru are still working.
Revolving Loan schemes in three continents are ongoing.
Helen Wright keeps me updated on the project in Jharkhand. India (2002) The boys taken out of bonded labour and given loans to set up businesses or to buy tools for apprenticeships is working because all but one paid back the loans.
Projects that had ripples: The Henry Doubleday Research Foundation, received funds from our government for research in organic agriculture but not to put any in to operation in Africa. We paid them to do it in Baring district in Kenya. Halcyon visited that project. It was so successful that neighbouring governments are copying it. Similarly the peripatetic skin care clinic for people with albinism in Tanzania is still working and the Malawi government has copied it.
That was the past but a past I believe Kennington can be proud of .
I’m a believer in libraries giving access to the world and for upward mobility. I wouldn’t be talking to you today if, as a child, I hadn’t had access to Luton Central Library. That’s why I am also proud that many people in Kennington rallied around to save our library from closure and are helping to build the first community library in west Kenya in Musanda, the village we will twin with.
Meeting here Today connecting with Nancy Rajab and Eunice is the Present
The Future is the scouts and their pen pals and the Cosmic Cats authors. I brought together St Swithun’s School with a school near Musanda for this project. Storytelling is loved everywhere in the world- it can connect us all. The children here and there produced this beautiful book. That is what friendship can do, feed the imagination and encourage empathy and love not hate. In the video, I was in a fifties car. Rajab and Eunice have flown here in a modern jet. In October, we hope to be transported to a new era- a future you in this room must create.
Jacqs Motion serving the Cosmic Cat cake and Daniel Livingstone reading his fabulous story.
There was an exchange of gifts. Amena Sutton, adminsitrator of Kennington Chorale presented a copy of I Love You All– the history of the choir and Crucifixion the work especially composed for them by Tom Edny.
Memories of Helen Peacocke: The importance of my talk at Headington LitFest on May 10
On May 10, I’ll talk about the importance of telling your story. Yesterday was the funeral of the former The Oxford Times food writer, chef, author and drama critic, Helen Peacocke. The Humanist celebrant, Ian Wilcox used my castaway interview with Helen when giving his tribute to her. Similarly, when Trevor Cowlett the founder/ director of Kennington Choir and Air Commodore Bob Martin died, their families were able to use their life stories written by me. I expect many of you have experienced the feeling. Why didn’t I talk to my father, sister friend about that when they were alive? If you haven’t been interviewed by me or anyone else, why not write down your stories ?
Memories of my friend which will keep her alive for me. I used to call us the LE girls –the female contributors to Oxfordshire Limited Edition magazine when it was award winning. We used to meet twice a year for a meal. Here’s a pic of us taken by Helen in her garden.
She was a dog lover and real ale lover and wrote walks to pubs with dogs. I had the privilege of rekeying some of those walks with her I invited her to talk about the Paws books at the Kennington Literary Festival which I organised before the libraries were threatened with closure.
If you go to the Story Museum you will see Winnie the Witch’s birthday cake. Helen made that. So when we wanted to thanks Korky Paul for helping us to save the libraries, I asked her to make one we could give him.
Her food photography was second to none. Take a look at her pics in Green Power the Spirulina Cookbook. She provided the recipes for free for the Nasio Trust.Helen did something exceptional 10 years ago-she believed in locally sourced food and lived only on them for year- to show it can be done. The only exception she made was salt, coffee and lemons.
She loved poetry and booked tickets for us to go to Adelstrop on the 100 anniversary of Edward Thomas’s poem. In those days writing for The Oxford Times was a privilege, as you can see from the pics display anther memorial yesterday. Pics of her with Terry Waite, John Thaw, Terry Wogan, Tommy Steele, Michael Palin etc. Here’s her castaway feature.
Helen-Peacocke408590-b2a8-4bc6-bea0-69dc45a70b91 See some of you on May 10?
Peggy Seeger and Ruth Crawford Seeger
Today, March 19.2025, the composer of the day on BBC Radio 3 was the first celebrated female American composer, Ruth Crawford Seeger, the mother of Mike and Peggy and stepmother of Pete, who sang at Obama’s inauguration. I had the privilege of sending Peggy to my mythical island of Oxtopia. Her life story was long adventurous and controversial so it took six hours and I had to reduce it to 4 pages. You can read it on this link.
Peggy’s mother died in 1953 so Peggy was denied a deep personal adult knowledge of her. Ruth wanted Peggy to become a concert pianist and she could have but it was folk music and Ewan MacColl who stole her heart.
Last week Roberta Flack died. Her recording of Ewan’s song When First I Saw Your face was an enormous hit and helped Peggy and Ewan when their life was tough financially. Ewan had composed it for Peggy and only sang it once -over the phone to lure her back to England from the USA.
When I met her, she was about to start work on her memoir which she fittingly titled FIRST TIME EVER and so invited me to the launch and I organised a second successful launch in my village of Kennington for our library.
Before that we had fun together appearing in a local film directed by Philip Hind supporting KOA and the Children’s Radio Foundation
It was first shown at a Fifties Fandango where my artist friend, Weimin He, made the delightful sketch of her.
https://vimeo.com/64536645 Fifties Fandango
Memoir in all its variety.
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 men wrote their memoirs and I had the privilege of reviewing them and compering Ray’s book launch in Blackwell. Artist Weimin He captured the moment in brushstrokes. I wrote Weimin’s story from Manchuria to Oxford via Belfast in Oxford Castaways. Weimin He – Castaway
Memoir doesn’t have to be about every aspect of a life and it’s true in this case. Rays’ Stealing Dylan from Woodstock is double the size of Food of Love but is about one momentous year. Roger decided to concentrate on just two aspects of his life –his sporting and his scientific career.
Memoir can help readers empathise with people in circumstances almost beyond their imagination such as Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime. It was easy for me to understand how that felt because when Atam and I met in Smethwick in the West Midlands mixed relationships were regarded with hostility.
Memoir and novels help us walk in someone’s else’s shoes. I recommended these memoirs for Shepherd.com https://shepherd.com/best-books/memoirs-which-help-us-understand-the-world
Politics, Lives, Page Turners: The Courage of Claret Press publishing Sylvia Vetta and Pen Farthing
Politics, Lives, Page Turners: The Courage of Claret Press publishing Sylvia Vetta and Pen Farthing
I first made this blog before Pen Farthing and I talked at the Oxford Indie Book Fair .
Today’s Guardian feature warrants re-posting it.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/18/kabul-afghanistan-animal-airlift-whistleblower-employment-tribunal?
I love my publishers new book mark. It sums up what Claret Press is about. Their latest author is Pen Farthing and his book is titled Operation Ark. The last government and the Tory Press trashed Pen’s reputation as a means of diverting our attention from the chaos and apathy that marked Dominic Raab’s handling of leaving Afghanistan. Decide for yourself after reading his account telling the WHOLE story ! Or come to the Oxford Indie Book Fair on Dec 1 and hear us discuss it. https://www.oxfordindiebookfair.co.uk/whats-on-december…/
Pen had previously been published by one of the big guys, Penguin Random House. But they decided his brand is ‘toxic’. I’m delighted that Claret Press has published his account of events in August 2022, so readers can make up their own minds knowing all the story and not just the propaganda line ‘Pets before People’. In my opinion, the government used him as a scapegoat to divert the vitriol away from their incompetence. After twenty years in Afghanistan, they hadn’t a plan for an orderly and successful evacuation and the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab couldn’t be bothered. He preferred to stay on the beach in Cyprus. That Pen managed to get out his 68 Afghani staff without their help, is an achievement. You need to read the whole story to understand that this charity is not about Pets over People. 1000 Afghans a year were dying of rabies after being bitten by street dogs and his charity was trying to make that a thing of the past.
I knew that Katie had courage. My first novel Brushstrokes in Time was 10 years in the making. When I learned from the artist Qu Leilei about the courageous Stars artists, I realised that their story was ignored and forgotten –written out of history. I believe it’s an IMPORTANT story that needs to be told. As no one else would write it, and no one in China can, because of censorship, I took on the task. That entailed three years interviewing Leilei and other Stars, a year researching and visiting the places in the book. While doing that I studied for the Diploma in Creative Writing at Oxford ,so that I had confidence to do it as a novel. By creating a few fictional characters, I could tell the story without harm to living people.
I sent it to Myslexia. I knew they introduce you to an agent if they shortlist you. They indeed did that for me. The agent said that my novel was interesting, well-written and a publishable page turner but unfortunately she wouldn’t be able to sell it. I tried other agents and the ones who responded did so in a similar way. One was honest and explained the reason, ‘You are not Chinese.’ They were afraid of the toxicity of the label ‘cultural appropriation.’ I thought the Ms would stay on my computer until a friend told me about Claret Press. In her latest newsletter she explains why she takes on authors like me and Pen. https://www.claretpress.com/single-post/a-sip-of-claret-news-operation-ark-is-out-now
She writes,
‘Last Saturday I set up my stall at the Oxford Indie Book Fair alongside 60 other exhibitors. The OXIBF promotes books and voices from outside the mainstream publishing industry (by mainstream I mean the ‘Big Five’ publishers responsible for 80% of all books published in the US and UK). It was, as always, a delight. It was, as always, bigger and better than before. And its existence is thanks to Claret Press author Sylvia Vetta and a few of her friends. I met Sylvia after a literary agent told her that no publisher would take her novel which was inspired by Qu Leilei, the Chinese founder of the Stars Art Movement, now exiled — like so many of his compatriots. Her fictionalised telling of recent Chinese history lifts the lid on its tumultuous change including the Cultural Revolution, the Democracy Movement and the Stars Art Movement (1979).
Equally, it is a touching coming-of-age love story. Brushstrokes in Time was praised by professors at both Harvard and Oxford and the Guardian’s chief foreign correspondent for China, among others. It was translated into German. And yet, the reason why the big publishers wouldn’t take it because Sylvia is not Chinese. They didn’t think it was authentic enough despite the story being based on many, many interviews of Qu Leilei conducted by Sylvia herself.
Also at the Oxford Indie Book Fest was The Dawson and Lucy Series author Steve Sheppard, who writes page-turning thrillers full of twists and adventure with a kick-ass heroine and a lovable hero. They also happen to be laugh-aloud funny. So are they comedy thrillers? What to call this unique blending of styles? For lack of an easily marketable label, Steve couldn’t get published by the big leagues. My gain. Again Steve’s books have been praised widely by comedy writers and by his growing legion of fans.
And then there’s Pen Farthing. We launched his book in London this Monday. He was a Sunday Times bestseller who fell out of favour with his publisher because of the uproar over the Afghanistan Evacuation. You’d think that would mean that he’d be even more of a hot ticket. But no. He got blackballed and lost not just his publisher but also his literary agent. Again, his book, Operation Ark, about escaping from Afghanistan during the disastrous evacuation in the summer of 2021, has been highly praised.’
Has Stephen Mangan seen Oxford Castaways?
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 exactly how I devised my castaway series. I gave my island a NAME – OXTOPIA. Oxford Castaway, the artist Weimin He, painted the cover illustration. The island is covered with the inspirational items that the castaways chose to take with them to Oxtopia. Will they share them? When we launched Oxford Castaways 2, we held a debate. Four castaways chaired by castaway Bill Heine discussed what of Oxford they would like to recreate on Oxtopia and what they would like to leave behind?
I was moved last week by Nemony Lethbridge on Desert Island Discs. Under Lauren Laverne, the castaways have become less predictable and, in my opinion, this was one of the best ever episodes . I apologise if I sound egotistical but that variety is what I tried to create in my castaways series for The Oxford Times. I was privileged to interview 120 inspirational people with links to Oxford, every month from Jan 2007 to Dec 2016. I modeled it on Desert Island Discs (without the music). My castaways could take art, books and objects to the island to Oxtopia. The features were turned into three books filled with fabulous photographs and life stories. The launch of the first book was in the Ashmolean Cast Gallery where the legendary Roger Bannister gave the closing speech. 
The artist Weimin He illustrated the cover of Oxford Castaways (1) Joanna Harrison (The Snowman animator ) designed the cover of Oxford Castaways 2.
Weimin has attended and sketched at many castaway events. He sketched the wonderful Peggy Seeger when she came to another gala night I organised. Weimin and Peggy are both Oxtopians.
The wonderful American soul singer, Roberta Flack died on Monday. Roberta’s famous, among other things, for her rendition of ‘First Time Ever’ by Ewan McColl.
I had the privilege of sending Peggy Seeger, to my mythical island of Oxtopia. Her life has been long and full of adventure so the interview was over 4 hours. Peggy told me that Ewan had written the song for her. She had fallen in love with him but when she realised that he was married, she returned to the States. Ewan sang it over the phone to the twenty one year old Peggy, to lure her back and he succeeded. There are 60 cover versions including by Elvis Presley but it was Roberta’s recording that soared. After Peggy and Ewan married their financial situation was precarious & the success of Roberta’s rendition of Ewan’s song gave them stability. I’ve had some memorable meetings with Peggy. I love the sketch that Weimin He made at one of the event’s I organised for KOA when this video was shown.
https://vimeo.com/64536645 Fifties Fandango
Here is her fascinating life story Peggy Seeger
The series could have gone on forever but Newsquest stopped employing freelancers so my twenty years of writing for The Oxford Times ended. While it lasted it, the castaway events were warm, fun and friendly like this one in Antiques on High. I’m next to Colin Dexter and behind me are the poet Jenny Lewis, a founder of the Isle of Wight Festival, Ray Foulk ,the film producer Victor Glynn , former radio journalist Bill Heine and illustrator Korky Paul . 
If you are interested in the series, documentary film maker Zoe Broughton filmed this illustrated lecture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NvrzUnGE50
Here are a couple of collages of some Oxford Castaways.
It was a huge privilege to get to know these wonderful people and many became friends including the Bannisters. Roger was present at the launch of Oxford Castaways 3 in the Maths Insitute. His daughter, the delightful Charlotte Bannister Parker presided. It was one of his last public events. and I love this photo of them together taken at the launch event. 
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When he died I wrote this tribute for the Indian online newspaper The MadrasCourier .
To buy copies of Oxford Castaways 2
Go to
http://www.oxfordfolio.co.uk
and click on the cover image.