In May we’ll mark Mental Health Week, so now feels like a good time to write about what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a psychiatrist. To begin, I thought, I would do a bit of research to see how others have covered the topic. I didn’t...
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Quite possibly the best thing to come out of the Israeli elections is the brilliant quote by an Israeli journalist, “To Bibi or Not To Bibi”. The spectre of the elections pales in comparison to Brexit; both were pretty much off the menu at this we...
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Silent screams and distorted faces fill the streets of Kigali on the anniversary of those who remember the genocide. On the evening of 6 April 1994, the plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi en route from Dar es Salaam to Kigali was ...
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What is it about April? April inspires thoughts of birds chirping, rebirth and hope. It inspired ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ by William Wordsworth when he saw a “long belt” of daffodils on 15 April 1802. But T.S. Eliot may have been on to somet...
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There’s not a celebrity in sight to champion the world’s most undervalued humanitarian crisis in the world. Never heard of Burundi? Not surprising. The statistics make you want to weep. It’s ranked last in the World Happiness Report. It’s the sec...
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The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, is not responsible for the death of Shamima Begum’s third child, regardless of what Labour shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbott, claims. As this story slips from the headlines, it’s a good time to remember the pligh...
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When I first moved to London, people would ask how anyone could afford to live here. From a Canadian perspective, the prices were astronomical. I’m not sure I ever had a concrete answer except to say that somehow we managed. The other question was...
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It’s a classic image: a movie star, often but not always white, smiles benevolently as little black African children grin back. A phalanx of imposing-looking military minders in flak jackets holding machine guns protect the VIP, while, inevitably,...
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Just when I thought I might survive Brexit, or at least survive not being pushed over the cliff edge by deals, no deals, hard borders, second referendums, and resignations, Asos issues a profit warning. The announcement by one of the world’s leadi...
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I arrived in Moscow thirty years too late. Except for the five red stars over the Kremlin, any vestige of Communism was obliterated by the time I took my first trip to the Russian Federation in October 2018. I walked from my Stalin-era ‘penthouse’...
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Dispatches from the Kabul Café 
Genocide – Personal Stories, Big Questions 