The Enlightenment Club: A Playlist
M usic plays a key role in my novel ‘The Enlightenment Club’, so I thought I’d compile a playlist for it. Requiem by WA Mozart. Introit...
Liberalism, Hobbes (again), Maslow...
Yesterday might well have been the Last Day of Summer. Sunny but not relentlessly so – a smattering of fleecy clouds – a bit of breeze,...
Thomas Hobbes, Civilization and Therapy
I went to Oxford yesterday – purely as a tourist – and enjoyed wandering around the beautiful old buildings, designed as places where...
The Hero's Non-Journey
The Hero’s Journey is a staple in therapy / personal development – not to mention Hollywood scriptwriting. It begins with the ‘hero’ (of...
RIP Tony McPhee
As one gets older, one’s teenage heroes start dying. Especially in music, most of them have vanished from the public eye for years – how...
Classic Mystery
I must admit, my preferred type of crime story is reasonably hard-edged. I’ve been reading George Pelecanos recently, and loving it....
How to win Eurovision
An excellent evening courtesy of the Royal Television Society – thanks to them for organizing and running the event – on ‘How to Win...
A Remarkable Man
Yesterday, I attended the most remarkable zoom call in my life. ‘I’ and hundreds of students and academics on one end, and on the other,...
A Soft Power Coup
Last Saturday, the UK became loved in Europe again (for the moment, at least). We came second in the Eurovision Song Contest, something...
An Instant Guide to the Eurovision Final
So, this is it. 24 countries will be battling it out tonight for the Eurovision trophy. This is a glass model of an old-fashioned...
