News

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….
» Continue Reading

The first time I met Rory Stewart was in Afghanistan at a dinner party held in the house where I was living. I had just arrived in Kabul and had no idea who this odd, lanky Brit was. But I have two vivid memories of that evening. One was how much Stewart looked like the…
» Continue Reading

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. The guilty confessions are erupting from politicians faux-troubled consciences like molten lava from Mt Vesuvius. Michael Gove has done it, Rory Stewart has done it, Dominic Raab has done it – and frankly, who cares? Our prisons would heave with writers, politicians, journalists, entertainers and dozens of casual drug users…
» Continue Reading

Finding Your Way Round Kabul  The following comments are stimulated by Heidi Kingstone’s “Dispatches from the Kabul Cafe.”  Heidi is a Canadian journalist who spent four years in Afghanistan based in Kabul just getting around and alongside the folk you might expect to find there, civil, military heroic, sometimes suffering individuals, sharps and flats included. …
» Continue Reading

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 have to look far…
» Continue Reading

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 week’s Muslim News Awards for Excellence, which I attended. There…
» Continue Reading