Invisible borders are everywhere. They divide not only different ethnic communities but those of differing social class as well. The anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King reminds me of the time I unwittingly crossed one such invisible border in Atlanta, Georgia.
Read more ...This week marks the 73rd anniversary of the British and US Second World War bombing raid on the German city of Dresden. The attack was controversial at the time and has remained so throughout the decades. Thousands of civilians died in a firestorm. There are questions about the morality of targeting civilians and about the need for the attack in February 1945 when the war was almost at an end. Soviet troops were only a few miles from the city which was crowded with refugees.
Read more ...At first glance it seems to me that poetry and science make strange bedfellows. The latter demands accuracy and clarity, the former is open to the interpretation of the reader, revealing more than the mere words suggest.
Read more ...2018 – a year of anniversaries. Prague, Paris, Chicago, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy. Names and places that resonate today. All of these will be talked about and read about this year, fifty years on from assassination and riots. For me, a year of personal memories.
Read more ...Some people seem to be scratching their heads, asking themselves why Coventry has been chosen as UK City of Culture 2021. British people that is. What doesn’t seem to be realised is that Coventry is an international city, its name resonating with people around the world. Its message of peace and reconciliation is heard by thousands in other countries and has done so since the building of the inspirational new cathedral consecrated in 1962.
Read more ...Paul Oestreicher has played a significant role in my life every since I first went to East Germany in the 1960s to take part in the Coventry Cathedral project of reconciliation in Dresden. At that time, I did not know him, or know of the behind the scenes role he had played in enabling this project to take place between Britain and East Germany – two countries on the opposite side of the Iron Curtain. Paul was a leading Cold War peace campaigner and has continued to espouse this cause, renewing his call for a peaceful world in a speech … Read more …
The other weekend I met up with an eclectic group of people who had one thing in common – Exmoor ponies. Given the chance many of them would have spent the whole day sitting there chatting about Exmoor ponies, telling their personal stories about this fascinating breed. We were there because a woman who shares this Exmoor pony passion in spades has spent the past few years collecting some of these stories together and has just published them in a book – The Exmoor Pony Chronicles. Sue Baker has been deeply involved with Exmoor ponies for much of her life. She caught the bug when she researched the ecology of free-living Exmoor ponies for her PhD in the late 1970s.
Read more ...It is a traumatic moment for most of us when friends or family are diagnosed with cancer. Very often, one of the first things we will ask is this: what type of cancer do you have? By this we mean is it breast cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer and so on. But sometimes the answer to that questions is: I don’t know. For the last ten years a small charity has focussed its efforts on making people aware of a type of a cancer where it proves difficult and sometimes impossible to identify the site of the primary tumour. That’s when the answer to the question is: I don’t know. Why does this matter? It matters because …
Read more ...A poem about green tomatoes has won the Megan Young Poetry Prize. The winner, Ayshe-Mira Yashin, aged 14, is a pupil at the Stephen Perse Foundation school in Cambridge. The award was launched in 2014, in memory of my daughter, Megan Young, who was a pupil at the school and who died aged 32, four months after being diagnosed with cancer. Megan was an equine veterinary surgeon, but she was also a poet having expressed herself through her poetry throughout her life. Some of her poetry has been published in Wordsmith: The Gift of a Soul …
Read more ...What does it mean when doctors tell a patient that they have cancer but, unfortunately, they can’t tell you what kind of cancer you a suffering from. How can they not know? Why don’t they know? This is what happened to my daughter Megan Young seven years ago. What it means is that the medical experts are unable to locate the primary tumour. And what this means – in turn – is that treatment will be a very hit and miss affair because most cancer treatment is targeted at specific tumours whether that be breast, colon, lung and so on. …
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