I wonder how many of us ever get our lives right first time round? And I wonder if there only ever is a first time round. But that’s a deep spiritual question which I don’t want to get into. Most of us have enough things on our plates without worrying about whether or not this [...]
The summer holidays are drawing to a close. A pretty banal statement, you might think? Not if you work in the field of education, as I do, or if you’re still in the process of being educated - which we all were, once upon a time, right? That is, unless you happened to be brought [...]
I recently read an interview with a writer who said that she far preferred fictional love stories to real life. The longer I live, the more I agree with that sentiment. I guess that’s why some people write, and some people read, and some people do both. And some people are really, really lucky, and [...]
I once had a boyfriend who had a very simplistic philosophy on life. According to him (let’s call him Joe Bloggs), what could anyone want more in life than good food, good wine and good sex? Our relationship did not last long. But although it’s true that Joe was a rather simple sort, he was [...]
My father once wrote a poem for my mother, before they were married. Although he was Polish, he had an amazing command of the English language, rather like a Joseph Conrad or Vladimir Nabokov. So here are his words of love, sixty years on, in all their time-locked beauty. You asked me how I [...]
I’ve just come back home from a minor operation, and the memory of the surgeon’s knife cutting through flesh, sinews and bones has set my brain neurons hurtling all asunder. Of course I didn’t feel any pain during the actual operation itself, thanks to the sweet liberation of anesthesia. But the very mention of the [...]
This is what one reviewer had to say about my novel, “Once Upon a Thousand Hills”. The combination of the Rwandan Genocide, contemporary London and a quirky young woman rebelling against her Jewish upbringing immediately caught my attention. Although Naomi seems to be a happy-go-lucky young woman, we soon learn that her life is riddled with [...]
