Category: Articles

• June 5, 2015

  Germanwings, depression and blame

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2015.]   The recent Germanwings airline tragedy has naturally been the focus for countless media stories. Many of us in Catalonia know people who were acquainted with victims and their families but there is another personal aspect to the crash that seems to provoke…
• May 1, 2015

  By Its Cover

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2015.]   It’s not often that you read a book that is so absolutely propelled by dialogue. Thankfully though, with Donna Leon it is high quality and as colourful as a medieval pageant.   Set in modern day Venice, at a relaxed and leisurely…
• April 5, 2015

  The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2015.]   Reading a book is never a neutral, objective experience. We can send our eyeballs through the first page to the last page in one stage of our lives then do this with the same book when we are older and it will…
• April 3, 2015

  Easy on the eye

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2015.]   Watching my son doing his geography homework the other day I was struck by how much time he was spending on selecting online images to accompany his (minimal) written work.   This activity is now a big part of modern education which…
• March 7, 2015

  1984

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2015.] It’s not easy for me to be objective about this masterpiece of a book. Whenever I write any non-fiction, I always have one man (figuratively) looking over my shoulder and that man is George Orwell – he is nothing less than a literary…
• March 1, 2015

  Why go the public way? (Part two)

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2015.] When I was much younger my mother used to tell me that one day if I ever needed a pay raise I should just go and ask my boss for one. In the 1950’s when she was at work, before having my brothers…
• February 1, 2015

  Why go the public way? (Part one)

  [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, February 2015.]    If tomorrow the government for some reason disappeared and we were all left without a system of state would it in fact be such a bad thing? There are people across the planet (and especially in the USA) who say that anarchy or…
• January 15, 2015

  What Have We?

       [An extract of this poem was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, December 2014.] There’s the vacant look of history’s books Slave labour and murder thy neighbour Innocents torture and screw your own daughter This is the past we still have We see human remains and bullet-trains Product wars and useless laws Greed…
• January 11, 2015

  Blue Black Friday

    [A version of this article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2015.]   Just last month we witnessed the latest craze from the USA arrive here. Without doubt, the Black Friday sales will now be an annual event and will certainly grow in intensity each year. If anything accurately represents pure, raw…
• January 1, 2015

  An Englishman in Madrid

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2015.] "Look, I’ll tell you how things really are," says one of the author’s characters (speaking in 1936,) "whatever they say, this is not a poor country. This is a country of poor people." And it is the elements of social class, poverty and…