Tag Archives: books

rows of stockings

Posted on December 16, 2025 | Leave a comment

Man of the week for me was

Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, who named the fear to say Putin will make war on Europe and we should get our heads around it now -shortages, cold, bombs, disruption.  File this under “prepare for the worst and hope for the best” which is a good way to live

 I wish I could send cards

to everyone I wanted to but it is expensive, impractical and unrealistic.  So here, for the record, are things in my stockings filed under what I want: what I don’t want: and what I wish for, denoted w, dw and wh.  

I wish I could thank you all for staying with me this troubled year (w). I wish I could thank every journalist, writer and presenter who has given me pleasure – quite a lot, hooray (w).   But you can’t get to them, even if you could fork out for the postage.  I would ban, blow up or otherwise disable social media (w) which I regard as the Other’s War on the west,..However it came about – oh the hubris of humankind.

I’d like us all to do a bit more towards every kind of peace up

to and including world peace (w)and I would like to be out of pain (w).    I would like to send a group card (w) to my local Waitrose –  a shop staffed  by kind professionals, a credit to the race.

Christmas brings out the competitive – the best food and drink, clothes, gifts, party, guest list, decorations – like the eleven plus with holly.  I would ban the word “perfect” in this context.

(w)    My Christmas  is mine, about the past  (both glowing and grim memories) but it couldn’t have started better.  I hope in the smiling anterooms of another world that my parents know how much I appreciate their love, the food they gave me, the wonderful simple memories they created for years (w). I remember my son’s second Christmas and the smallest blue jeans on the planet.  

Of course there is wish fulfilment at Christmas –  there is leave, to go and meet (w), there is warmth and nourishment and colour and light and extra ordinary patience – with this one’s indigestion and that one’s paddy.   But I w ill do it my way, not your way, and I’d encourage  people to read everything they could about the origins of Christmas and the stories that have built up around it (w) – sure, they are stories.  A Russian proverb says “A story is more powerful than the Tsar.” 

  Let’s hope ours, acted on, believed in and committed to, will be more powerful than Putin (w).

Forget endless food of no value overloaded with fat and sugar and heaven knows what else (dw)  Only those catering to extended groups need food on this scale (dw)  You make a selection from the trimmings the children adore – they are unnecessarily expensive unless they mean something to  you (dw).  I have unscented candles 365 days of the year (w) though I was tempted to one in a dark red glass container, scented with things I liked .  But I don’t need it. 

For the first time for ages, I saw a coat I liked (w), a bracelet I liked (w) and a tempting lip gloss  (w) .  A person can dream.  All three of these could be countersigned as wishes (wh).  I don’t need them and can’t afford them but it was lovely to see something I really liked, to have an innocent yearning for something that pleased my eye. 

 I wish(wh) to keep my temper better – I have lost it twice recently with twits. Yes   that is a value judgement.  Trimmed with your best baubles, a twit is a twit.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people reinvested in basic courtesies and good manners , realizing that this is the hallmark of power and maturity, not necessarily weakness and evasion (wh).   It’s all in the tone. Whoever is next in power, I hope they can communicate better than over the last many years (wh).   It’s a learned skill, it should be mandatory in public life to learn it.     Make war on dumped rubbish, large or small, get some of the bright directionless young to do something about it (wh) Believe in commonsense (wh), smile more often than frown (wh) and understand that this world is the only one we have and cherish it (heartfelt).

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on the record

Posted on November 18, 2025 | Leave a comment

Three cheers for John Humphrys

about whom I know nothing beyond that he gave a me an interview at the old Talk Radio (briefly a radio station), encouraged me at one of the few industry  do’s I could be persuaded to attend  and spoke with unexpected candour to me at  Radio 4, in the bowels of the BBC, long before its present convulsions. (see the owl in last week’s annalog – personal experience of him, myself as witness.)

Accurately quoted temperate and even appropriate criticism of the BBC (for whom he worked 30 years and more) from his latest book (2019) took him he writes “from hero to zero in the BBC.”    And therein lies the problem – corporate defensiveness is his description.  I call it bad management.

And of course Donald Trump

is going to pursue charges against the BBC: he is famously litigious, he has several actions outstanding in the US including against The Wall Street Journal.  He can afford it, and he hopes it will keep the mind off Epstein, his involvement with whom in the US still has a way to run and fallout that can’t be estimated.   What we used call “trouble at the mill.”

If it is a mark of appreciation to continue to be interested in somebody when they get it wrong, I’d think of Michelle Obama

(new book The Look, about dressing for every kind of eye, and why, and how.) 

Having read her autobiography Becoming, I was agreeably surprised.  But then she appeared for Kamala Harris’s ill fated campaign and for my money got it all wrong.  She looked wrong, wearing black (very difficult on tv camera), too much jewellery, fake plaits and she had (as is common now) her speech on autocue.  And it was wrong – too long, too much agreed hagiography – ill judged.  I wanted to shout “Throw it away and speak!”  

Those were the days …  

But I like her and she carries with great grace being 6 feet tall, Afro-American, good looking, intelligent and successful.  And it’s hard.  Easier to criticize her arms than listen to what she is trying to do.

I think of Shabana Mahmood, the only front ranking Labour government appointee I have seen, unequivocally praised in print by political rivals. 

She works, she’s bright, she’s trying to do something on which it is too easy to pour scorn – and be herself, a British born Asian (parents from the Pakistani side of Kashmir) making difficult decisions in public.    She appears less in the press that a President’s consort so we haven’t got round to sniping about her sartorial taste yet but just wait till she makes a misstep – and you will hear all about her flat hairdo and the length of her skirt.

I don’t want to write about the BBC, I don’t know nearly enough but you can rely on JH’s experience of “you’re either on the bus” ie blanket endorsement “or off the bus” ie dare to have an independent thought and the doors close. 

This is an illness of radio in general.  One minute you are doing it to apparent praise and certainly appreciation and the next minute, you end the programme on Friday – and you’re gone   -somewhere else, gardening, extended plastic surgery – gone.

But it is kind of shocking to see it, in measured tones, in print, years after the event – and I did wonder.  Senior political reporter treated just like little me – till I could find another raft and scull to something else. Public life means you treasure your real friends and you learn to roll with the curious, the disapproving, the unfriendly.  Reinvention may be just as profoundly considered but less talked about and quite different.

Would I consider another radio show?  Yes, if I could work out the logistics of it, through fatigue to a quiet mind.   But nobody is offering.   I had a wonderful innings.   Nothing lasts forever.  There are second acts in public life but we only call them second acts because they involve the same progenitor: what is done is almost without exception very different.  Like marriage – for better or worse.  

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as others see us

Posted on November 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

Every so often, some kind person  suggests that I

might write another book … For the record, I wrote  three or two and a half  – this last was really commentary (I learned to call it a monograph) on some previously unknown  pictures of  the  film star Joan Crawford, who caught my  imagination.  JC’s story was the first time I  appreciated the cost of coming from nothing to something and having to make your life up, not once, but over and over again.  It also taught me that you should never be surprised at the backstory of an enormously successful person,

especially in media,  because  what is seen is  underwritten  by a lot of other less attractive qualities.

On BBC Radio Four Wednesday 12 November  you can hear the story of a writer hung out to dry, after many years of work which fed her writing, the in-person support of those she wrote about  and, for my money critically, that the people in power in the publishing company had not read the book that set off this catastrophic unravelling.  And  finally shamingly had to admit it. That is of course now down played  by  a statement from the current “suit” about  it being in the publishers` past,

deeply regrettable, sincere apologies to all concerned, etc.

Categoric statement about any kind of creativity:  if you haven’t with your own eyes

seen the picture, read the material (article, magazine, leaflet, book and so on), seen the film or play, examined the statue or the woodcut  – you don’t know what the hell you are talking about.  And this story, of the author Kate Clanchy called Anatomy of a Cancellation, is about how you can be taken against to the detriment of your life and work. 

I remember meetings with publishers.  I had sort of some sort  literary representation at one time.   I didn’t generate  pennies or profile so I probably wasn’t as interesting to them as they gave  me to understand.  Nor as malleable, or as skillful as they in those first enthusiastic moments  implied.   Thank heaven.

I remember changes of personnel at publishers without so much as “I thought you’d like to know …”  although I was directly involved. I remember disinterest and I remember dissatisfaction (personal, this) with the length of the procedure.

I wrote a memoir ( you couldn’t call it an autobiography – too soon) on spec.  No money changed hands, I wanted to see if I could do it.  I think of it  as I affectionately  pat the kitchen table (still with me) at which I wrote it, on a reconditioned manual typewriter (office model) which I still prefer.  

Hardback was painless, it went to paperback where a snooty editor asked me for a definition of “pack ice” – I said she’d  find it in the dictionary, which is where I found it – and checked it, before I used it.  I fought for the text I had written. 

It’s not my favourite book  but  I reread it a couple of years ago without  regret.    I didn’t get much in the way of review, because it was unfashionably candid.

Bear in mind please, that this is at a time when I thought writing a book was the be-all and end-all and would  confer on me  a kind of direction and serious mindedness to which I aspired.   And  respect. 

I wrote a novel of which I was reminded the other day when SR sent me a note about it and  A Psycho Analytic Analysis of the Mother and Daughter Relationship in … of which I had never heard. 

  36 years later,  I live and learn.  Mine is very much a first novel, an only novel.  I had a lot of work to do and I didn’t do it.

I learned over time various truths about  me, the life I was in, and writing.  I discovered that I might aspire to journalism – which was  going to be a long journey, God Bless the New York Review of Books, Robert Caro and all sorts of  people who made me think and kept me going, try again, try again – and a whole new appreciation of the  broadcast spoken word as  achievement.

No such thing as white collar occupation – blood on every collar !     

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logbreeding

Posted on October 28, 2025 | Leave a comment

Sometimes  you hit a log. 

Smartasses will say “ Better than the log hitting you” but it feels similar.   In my brief association with “proper journalism” (don’t ask) a brusque but likeable editor growled about my copy “There is a  piece in here if we could just get to the hook…” He found it second para  down, we moved it.

Please notice – all men!

Can’t find a hook.  

Go back to the alphabet (there is a new book on  the origins of the letters ) and the first letter is A.  A for Andrew.  I deeply do not want to  write about Prince Andrew, everybody else has, seriously and snippily.  Look. 

He’s an unpleasant waster, wife similar.  Daughters  ? Daughters.   I am deeply aware of the horrors of child abuse in whatever form, the hurt, the harm but I would rather not discuss it through the prism of  Jeffrey Epstein  and his dubious suicide.  

Andrew is an ageing B for  brat, the late Queen’s favourite and a lot of good it did him.   Am I the only person more concerned about any harm he may have done when dealing with the  no-flies- on-them Chinese in quasi diplomatic mode ?   Or is some sexual variant  always preferable  popular discussion to political  insecurity ?  

And putting aside affection and respect, leaving an insoluble mess to your offspring is not a kindness.   Whoever you are, tidy it up, tie it down.  Poor old King, cancer AND Andrew.

B is for  book(s), my revenge on scandalously unsatisfactory mess that terrestrial television is. 

  A respected industry friend said “I believe in the BBC” to which I  retorted “I’d like to.”  “ It’s our BBC” they sloganize ?   I wish. In my favourite TV column endless sensible complaints about the music overlaying everything.  Who listens ?  Not a soul.   We’re sick of repeats, yes we know it’s about money – what isn’t ?  Not helped by enormous expense in paying legal fees to settle very public messes – only incurred on this management watch.  Je reste ma valise,  a phrase which was the finest moment of the non-French speaking husband of a Francophone friend..

C is for the corporate model which means everything is about money

– not service, not human kindness.- eroded in its turn by  everything  having to fit in with the plan. Not P is for personal just the plan.  So when you do hit  C is for consideration, you almost don’t believe it.

D is for darling  which I am begin to understand is a word associated  less with the theatre of my youth and more with age itself.   My mother used it to me, it was a family endearment.  (I suppose D is for dated – fine.)  

We are not  going to get through all 26 letters including X for mystery  in one  go  so let me forward to R for readers and responders. After the very considerable  technological mess  I have been  through, nothing could have been more generous than the Response of

F for friends.  Without them, including one man who doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground, the lid of the Raeburn head would have exploded. 

 And then there was  Y for YOU.  People who read and responded, keeping one of  my sorely tried feet on the ground.   I can still make sentences, they haven’t all gone off to watch Traitors or Strictly.

They do have  minds and thoughts and sensibilities and  – they  know what they like when they read it.  T is Thank you – big  thank you.  Also old fashioned, don’t care, valuable phrase.  One of the tall young Asian men  cultivated by the friendly neighbourhood  pharmacist recognizes me, thawed by assiduous politeness on both sides, and yesterday made a joke.  Feet under the table, bless you.  Welcome.  

F is for flight of ideas

Heavily medicalized description – mine is more benign

(look it up) which is a wonderful image. Most of what I do is that or starts there.  Only sometimes  the ideas hide.  What you write is wooden.  It doesn’t cook.  There isn’t a link, only  the writer has to see the link  though  it’s wish fulfilment when other readers get it.

I used to think that I would never amount to a hill of beans  because I hadn’t suffered  enough.  I thought I was finished at  19, I hadn’t as my  pa pointed out, even started.   Did I have a way to go – not a clue beyond  doing my best and reading a lot. Hooray for logs.   

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not that simple…

Posted on October 21, 2025 | Leave a comment

Apparently Mark Twain

said “if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything” which is one of many largely impressive, occasionally gnomic utterances about the nature of a beast for which we need to have more understanding and respect.  

My sister didn’t care if she trod on your toes if she told you what she really thought.   And most of us have come across someone like that.  And it’s a weapon.  Not only says “I see you for what you really are “ or “what it really is”  – both of which are perceptions – but claims moral high ground. 

The truth may be simpler but there is a way to tell it and a time to tell it.   

 And how long are we going to confuse therapies of the mind with media?  It may feel wonderful  to tell all on camera  but better and safer in a more human context , from having tea or coffee privately in your kitchen with a good friend to the signed sealed and delivered  locked door confidence of the talking therapies.  All too soon we are in dirty linen territory, how to get back in the headlines … 

The price of fame is very high.  And a significant number of the people who attain it (rather than those who have it thrust upon them) have all the insight of a pine cone.

The weekend yielded three profiles – Keira Knightley, Charlie Sheen and Mick Hucknall – of whom two grew up and one is still a work in progress.    Yes, one woman and two men.

After years of hounding by the press,

Knightley worked out how to evade most of the worst of them but one day, still very young, she just walked away.  Her parents applauded.  And she describes how for the sake of sanity she became not-Keira, until she found a way through and could breathe. She spent her 40th birthday with her husband on a metal working course – happy.

The son of the actor Martin Sheen, Charlie hid in consumption of drugs, rewarded financially beyond the dreams of Croesus and in every other way for roles in for TV and films – married three times, paid sex with men and women and put so much up his nose and down his throat, a Mexican cartel temporarily refused to sell any more to him.  Paid bounty to keep his name out of the papers about his same sex encounters.  

Spent 30 years life trying to kill himself.  60, sober, watch this space.

And Hucknall, famously musically gifted, plain and charming, talks about a long journey which includes rescue by an imaginative art college and ends powerfully with knowing who he is – brought up  lonely by his father after his mother left, unafraid to stop when he needed to stop, understood from early days the power of deal.  And, given that we are all on the journey from youth to age, never didn’t know for long who or what or where from what he was. 

Admirable.

What becomes clear is how the rewards of extreme success get in the way of health and happiness.   As the Cheshire Cat says “We’re all mad here…”  Everything has a price tag.  Money buys perceptions or the means to block them.   And appearances are deceptive.  

Complications accrue around creativity and business deals, who’s involved, their axes to grind, rewards, perception – and so on.  If you don’t have some sense of you, the price is unpayable – in every way.

In these three weeks plus back to internet and landline (yes, I bought a mobile, a whole other discussion), I thought about my little fame.  Having my name recognised opened doors for me, it gave me pleasure.  It once got me a pair of shoes reduced.   Like everybody else, my self knowledge was learned.  I enjoyed almost everything I did and I made fewer compromises than most.  That has impact.   And these three interviews make it plain that you are not ready till you are ready.  Therapy may not work but it won’t if you don’t want it to.     And the truth will set you free.  And then it depends on how you use, for yourself and others, that freedom.     

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last

Posted on September 16, 2025 | Leave a comment

I was so busy reading, my coffee got cold.   So when I had absorbed the best edition of the paper for a while,  I came back into focus and reheated the drink.  Can’t stand cold coffee.  And I thought all over again of the vagaries of communication – not just modern communication – communication period.

In an  age of increasing  division, there are  two nations – those  online and those not.  When we began annalog eleven years ago  – I say we  because it exists  in communication – some  kind soul wrote and said  she wished I would  be on Facebook, I had so many friends out there  … And even then I knew, just as many enemies. 

I spit on social media. 

I am sure it has uses, some of them good,  but I like my private life.  Maybe I am the last generation who will  have any grasp of the difference between public and private life , the difference between spoken and written, any sense of “haven’t you got enough problems ?  What do you need any more for ?”

In current parlance , you can get hold of anybody.  But you can’t.  You can send them a message but there is no guarantee who receives it, what happens to it or how it is perceived.   Finding a written article about Erin O’Connor

was like meeting a friend.  I did meet her once in the street, six feet tall and colouring to die for.  I said “ Excuse me  but I admire you so much.  Please shake hands with me” and stretched out my hand.  She recognised me, we shook hands, and I told her of the early spread she had done which I kept.  She said interestedly “ But why ?   That was a long time ago  ..”  Which was  logical if you spent much of your professional life in fashion.  So  I explained:   she has a nose, I have a nose, as a definable feature we’re a group, she laughed delightedly – how you want a heroine to be.

If I were  depressed I would explain that the cost of stamps is now so prohibitive that the post will die out, or be reborn again as a private paid for service because stories about things not arriving are legion, like a Christmas card in August.   And lack of acknowledgement rules.  NOT OK.

For all those  who live through social media – even when it causes problems  (like the  12 year old quoted by a  sensible sounding clinical psychologist, who gets 200 hits

to start the day, loves them but finds the time and energy  she needs to deal with them makes her anxious) – few have any insight into the pressure.   I wonder if anxiety is as addictive as the process of using that all dominating click, while a young person would not necessarily recognise that disruption wasn’t only exciting, it was harmful.

There were always trolls, fixated people who can’t wait to be acknowledged for how they upset you. There was always somebody in any size audience and you learned to be ready and wary.  Now they have an additional credence – the message is  widely disseminated, which give sit a kind of acceptability.  I don’t accept it.

I could write a list of people I would like to be in touch with , to commend or condemn  but I have to admit  (to myself as well as the reader) that part of that  transaction is the acknowledgement.

Which is not under control.   You may write to Keir Starmer expressing concern for his response to Mandelson – not only for what  he (KS) didn’t “get” but for what Mandelson is, was and always will be – but there is no guarantee it reaches target, it is open to perception and abuse by every pair of hands through which it passes – hard copy, on the way to the bin or the shredder: electronic comment – well, how long is a piece of string ?

When I speak about communication, I mean  me to thee, thee to me.  Having written for publication for years, I accept  that the words are open to interpretation which is why I am serious about what I write,  Throw that into the public pond  – and we’re back to throwing stones into water

– the ripples go on forever.

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