How Joan Aiken fought to defend the wolves of Willoughby ChaseFor years the children's books magazine Books for Keeps published a series of interviews with authors - there was one of these 'authorgraphs' in each issue. Here is the wonderful Joan Aiken from issue 39 (July 1986):"The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was the first book to make money for me. I'd actually done two chapters just before my husband was ill but had put it away. Abelard Schuman, who'd published some short stories in America, accepted it (called 'Bonnie Green' then) but said it was too scary - could I prune it, take out the wolves? I said Never! My ... (more) |
Getting ready for Conference - Directory now out[IMG: Front cover of directory Autumn 2026] There are two ways you can prepare for party Conference. Six weeks out, when the agenda and the directory come out, you could sit down with a nice cup of tea and work out a tentative plan for how you are going to spend the 4 and a bit days in Brighton. If you are new to Conference, the agenda has all the motions up for debate – (you can read more about that here) so you can start to plan whether you might like to put in an amendment or a request ... (more) |
Wendy Chamberlain highlights Afghanistan "gender apartheid"There's been a lot of coverage about the fifth anniversary of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. I don't think I'll ever forget the desperate sight of people trying to get out while there was still a chance. The vast majority of them never did or could. The Taliban originally tried to say that it was all fine and women would still be able to continue their education. The reality is that women have little legal status and fewer rights, and are essentially counted as property of the men in their lives. Wendy Chamberlain chairs the All Party Parliamentary ... (more) |
Like Trump, Farage cannot understand democracyWhy do candidates turn up to election counts even if they know they've won it easily, or for that matter. lost it as heavily? It is because it is part of the accepted way of doing democratic things in this country. There are two reasons why I turn up, the first of which is to join in thanking all the people who've made the election work. Although the candidate is the most visible part of any campaign there are two lots of people without whom the candidate couldn't function properly. The first of these is of course the candidate's own ... (more) |
Steeleye Span with Peter Sellers: New York GirlsWhat was Peter Sellers doing playing the ukulele on a track on Steeleye Span's 1975 album Commoners Crown? Maddy Prior explains: While sitting over lunch we were discussing what we need to sparkle up the track New York Girls. Ukulele would be good someone said. Anyone got one? Anybody know someone who can play one? Peter Sellers plays it says Bob. Pause. Eyes meet, why not? We could ask. He could only say no. So we spent another interesting afternoon with a rather diffident Peter Sellers. I don't think he'd ever been asked to play on a session before and ... (more) |
Tom Arms' World ReviewWest Bank The actions of Israeli settlers in the West Bank must be truly horrific for Mike Huckabee, Trump's ambassador in Israel, to call them "terrorists" and denounce their actions in Qusra as an "horrific act of terror." In the past, Ambassador Huckabee, has been the chief American cheerleader for Israeli settlement of the West Bank. In 2017, before his ambassadorial days, Huckabee said: "There is no West Bank. It's Judea and Samaria." Later he added: "I think Israel has the title deeds to Judea and Samaria." After he was nominated ambassador in 2024, Huckabee was asked if Israeli annexation ... (more) |
Labour government needs to give universities a breakThe Guardian reports that university leaders are warning of financial turmoil in British higher education after new figures suggested a collapse in international student numbers would deprive the sector of vital income and undermine its future. The paper says that the sector's leaders have called on the government to rethink the levy on international student fees imposed under Keir Starmer, as a former universities minister warned there was a risk of a university "going under" because of the financial crisis: While UK sixth-formers enjoyed improved A-level results, and a record 194,800 English 18-year-olds were accepted by their first choice of ... (more) |
In which H.G. Wells sets out to fool his future biographersEmbed from Getty ImagesIn her Memoirs of an Uneducated Lady, this blog's heroine Marjory Allen records how H.G. Wells invited her to design the garden at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace, overlooking Regent's Park: He was seventy-three, already ill and dispirited, and visitors were not encouraged; but I spent many amusing hours with him. One foggy afternoon when we were sitting in his study, he drew out of the shelf one of his own books and inscribed on the fly-leaf, "To my most adored Annie, from H.G." The joke appealed to him and, taking one book after another, he ... (more) |
The Joy of Six 1562"Every large fire has two causes, the spark that lights it and the conditions that let it become so severe. Naming the fire, though, can hide this, as does reporting. A fire is named in hours, blamed in days, and attributed a true cause in weeks."Doug Specht argues that we should reterg 'wildfire' in favour of 'landscape fire', stating the spark where it is known and explaining the conditions that allowed it to spread. "Judge Paul McCloskey scanned a group of immigrant children, none of whom had lawyers present, in his windowless suburban Virginia courtroom this past Thursday. Where's the ... (more) |
Observations of an Expat: The Mecca AgreementIt is time for another round of musical chairs—Middle Eastern style. The region's countries are notorious for changing their friends and allies as often as their socks and the Mecca Agreement announced this week complicates the issue by throwing up a sandstorm of unresolved questions. But start with history. The region's first postwar security alliance was the British-inspired Baghdad Pact. Formed in 1955, it included the UK, Iraq, Iran,, Pakistan and Turkey. After the Iraqi revolution in1959, Iraq pulled out. At that time the Americans—who had been active non-members of the pact—became even more active non-members. Thus the Central Treaty ... (more) |