The Archbishop of Canterbury is proposing to groups of MPs his intention to chair “citizens’ assemblies” to stop a no-deal departure from the EU. First question: who are the “citizens” who will make up these so-called “citizens’ assemblies”? Citizens – though, since the people of Britain are not French republicans, we call ourselves “subjects” – voted decisively to leave the … [Read on]

Channel 4 posted its annual report in June, revenues were up by £15m in 2018 and its digital audience had increased by a quarter. Strangely Channel 4 News viewing figures are down by almost a tenth, nine percent year on year. They blamed ‘Brexit fatigue,’ as many of us do. But there is probably a more obvious reason staring them … [Read on]

Wolves have returned to the neighbourhood in which I have my house in France. It borders the département in which the so called Beast of Gévaudun, presumably a wolf, a pair or a pack of wolves, terrified the population in the middle years of the eighteenth century, killing perhaps a hundred people. Three miles from my house, local people have … [Read on]

The man stares rudely at me as if I don’t know my job. ‘But my ears and my throat are painful so I need antibiotics.’ Patiently, I explain that his ear drums both look normal. His throat and glands are fine too, that his multiple symptoms fit with a viral infection, so antibiotics wouldn’t help. In any case he’s already … [Read on]

 ‘As you have utterly failed to unify these dark tones how are you now going to manage the half tone correctly?’ ‘What are these?’ She rasped. I tried to explain to the art course teacher that in trying to find the correct half tone I’d discovered a second colour which looked better. ‘So now you’ve got two of them?’ she … [Read on]

I met someone on the bus who I know from my church. I was glad to see her, meeting people in the street and chatting is so different from my former life in London. Unfortunately, some of these conversations are all too predictable. ‘I’ve just been to the memorial gathering for Hiroshima,’ she breathed, barely audible with self-righteous satisfaction as … [Read on]

About a year ago, I shared a train compartment with a seemingly reticent Canadian fellow, a man heavily shielded by a newspaper, and I doubted I’d catch a syllable from the stolid moose. But after gobbling a handsome steak sandwich with yellow dressing and downing a pint, he eased into a happier frame of mind. And after another pint, and … [Read on]