When I was a teenager, the wealth of stories my mother raised me on began to resonate more deeply. All of them — memories of her youth — were exciting, romantic, and drenched in settings that cried out to be immortalised by literature or cinema. By then, I was already writing humble novellas, short stories [...]
Peter Fox was my mother’s fiancé, murdered in Cyprus in 1956. His remains have rested in an unmarked grave for nearly seventy years: his bones buried deep under the hard, hot soil of the British Cemetery of Nicosia. These past seventy years, Peter has been nothing more than a missing name, a missing stone, a [...]
I’m not a religious person, but with Easter almost upon us, the thought of death - and what lies beyond - comes acutely to mind. The younger you are, the fewer people you’re likely to have lost to the Grey Reaper, so this might not mean as much to you. Unless you’re one of the [...]
To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part… No doubt you recognise those timeless words. Perhaps you recited them at your wedding, or heard them recited at someone else’s wedding. But [...]
Probably everyone who’s reading this post will have experienced some kind of loss by now, whether it be for a beloved pet, a close relative, a friend, a partner, or another type of loss entirely. Like everything in life, there are various gradations of sorrow. I was eighteen when my grandmother died. It was a [...]
There are many things in life that are easier said than done, and moving on is one of them. How many people over the generations have been told to move on, and felt obliged to do so, rather like an assignment set at school? Or a New Year’s resolution never to be kept but [...]
Wendy Skorupski 