Category: Articles

• September 11, 2015

  Where have all the sad and angry songs gone?

  [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Sept. 2015.]   I heard a French song on the radio the other day. It sounded like one of those lovely ballads from around the time of the Second World War and it had a melody and lyrics that were sung with just enough melancholy to…
• July 2, 2015

  Hard to believe

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2015.]   "Remember, little children are not too little to go hell."   These are some of the words that are included in a new picture book published by a Puritan organisation in the United States last month. The book, whose title I choose…
• June 5, 2015

  Balancing Act

   [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2015.]   Here is a blatantly upper middle-class British family. They work together in a pottery-making business and this is the story of what happens to them in an eventful period of change in all of their lives. Joanna Trollope, a former chair of the…
• June 5, 2015

  TTIPing us over the edge

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2015.]   While we are all going about our daily business this month, big business is going about trying to make sure that Europe is run purely in its interest. If agreed to by the European parliament, the new Free Trade Agreement between the…
• 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…