About: Heidi

It’s as if there is no joy left in the world. These days I feel like the satirical 1930s American comic strip character in Li’l Abner, the well-meaning Joe Btfsplk, who brings misfortune on everyone and has a dark rain cloud always hovering over him. Look at the global situation, almost anywhere. Then there’s FOMO…
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Reporting gender-based violence in conflict is a metaphorical minefield as well as a literal one. We have also never been more sensitised to the issues of mental health and trauma. Writing about the use of rape as a weapon of war is complex, and not only for the obvious reasons. When a victim is interviewed…
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I miss the Cold War. The spy swaps on bridges, dead drops, sleeper agents, the threat of nuclear war, and going through Checkpoint Charlie from East to West Berlin and back. Anything is better than Brexit. Crossing the border in Cyprus between the Turkish North and the Greek South brought back memories of the past….
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Strange as it looks to us, the goings-on in Westminster over the past two weeks must seem even more baffling to those looking in from abroad. If the fate of nations weren’t in the balance, it would be a farce. A farce where clever boys use language with immense skill as they prove they are…
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Parliament is to be suspended, and five sheep are grazing on Hampstead Heath. It’s the Brexit version of chaos theory in a tin-pot dictatorship. We know it was Boris Johnson, not the Queen, who dreamt up the plan to prorogue Parliament. But it was Lindy Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (also known as Lindy Guinness), who…
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