The 1st time I went to Remembrance Sunday was 1928 I don't remember whether people wore #poppies but they wore their grief like jagged glass — Harry Leslie Smith (@Harryslaststand) November 7, 2014 100 years ago today. I post here just as I have before, the inscription on the Bomber Command Memorial on Beachy Head: […]
Category: Musings
On Being An Opinionated Novelist
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons I’ve often wondered how appropriate it is for a writer to share opinions on issues unrelated to their work. Particularly ones of a political nature. Specifically I wonder if I share too readily and express my opinion too often. Recent crises, particularly Brexit but not limited to that sequence of events, […]
The Water Diviner – Russell Crowe’s Gallipoli Film
TL-DR: It veered towards greatness, then lost its nerve (taking troubling historical liberties en route.) ETA. Worth reading Athena Andreadis’s take on the film. She has a lot more skin in this game, and her account is a passionate (and convincing) indictment.
A Cracking Review – And Why I Took Some Time off Twitter
I’ve been off twitter a few weeks. It was having a not-great effect on my mental health. It’s not people I chat to, you are all wonderful and I miss you! But there are certain things that will always trigger me when discussed. That isn’t all my fault – much of it, I angrily maintain, […]
Testament of Youth – Film Review
Thanks for everyone who left comments or kind tweets after my post yesterday about mental health. I’ve been privately told it helped other people that I spoke about it, and that’s really the most important thing of all. Sanity is not an absolute, it’s a spectrum, and most of us who are not utterly phlegmatic […]
2014: It’s Hard Out Here For a…Female Debut Novelist
2014 was a good year for me. On a personal level, my family added a generation when O arrived. Born in April 2014, he was the youngest guest at my launch. I had just referred to him in my launch speech and he’d disappeared and suddenly just materialised again, right on cue, along with his […]
Bist Du Bei Mir
A lot of my recent posts have been all about the book, the book, the book…I’ve barely had time to stop and reflect. I’ve managed to flee Christmas, a season I’ve never particularly liked, by signing books here, posting advertisements there. I’ve been in full on battle mode. But today is a change of pace, […]
Essay – On “Restrained, Elegant Prose”
There’s an old tale often retold in self-help books with Christian roots a la Norman Vincent Peale: an orator recites Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd”, to an audience who listens rapturously to his words and then breaks out into applause when he is finished. After a moment, an old man steps hesitantly up […]
Armistice Day
Taken at the Bomber Command Memorial near Beachy Head, November 5, 2014:
To Return to That Daily Mail Article
I’ve had a few responses on twitter and interest about my article in last week’s Daily Mail about being offered a job in 2009 and then abruptly having the offer withdrawn because I failed a psychometric test and was judged too “emotionally unstable” to work there. Something else kept it in my head too – the […]
