Few are the major cities that afford outdoor swimming at their very centre. Geneva, by virtue of its site at the head of one of Western Europe’s largest lakes, has always been an exception. There are several points at which …
Bathing on a building site is an improbable antidote to June in the city. Nonetheless, the Kings Cross Pond Club provides an enchanting, if unusual, oasis as the mercury rises. This temporary installation in the midst of the vast goods-yard redevelopment …
TES column 6 February 2015 ‘Professional’, used as a descriptive term, has undergone a transformation. Today it means ‘unequivocally good’. Governors are expected to work ‘professionally’ to encourage school improvement. Top-of-the-range tools and products are ‘professional quality’ and we aspire …
Professional foul: there is more to life than mammon Read more »
Originally published by The Guardian 9 January 2015 Hannah Weller’s campaign to “prevent the media from publishing photographs of children without their parents’ consent” makes a seductive pitch. She and her musician husband Paul were photographed with their young children, without their …
Over exposure: are new laws needed to protect celebrities’ children? Read more »
The first obvious signs that Christmas Day had arrived in Makumba, on the outskirts of Mombasa, Kenya, came when the children put up the decorations. Identical to those in a million British homes, the shiny plastic banners enjoin readers to …
TES column 28 November 2014 No band is better than its drummer, goes an old saying among rock n’ rollers. It reflects the vital underpinning that the rhythm section provides any musical ensemble, even if its members are the musicians …
Just a minute: without notes, meetings are wasted hot air Read more »
1. I grew up in a home where the King was revered. In the ’70s I couldn’t get excited about big ballads, curious concept albums and woeful film scores. The Sun recordings, however, had a raw, personal, intensity to which …
Tracks of my tears: an internal jukebox selection Read more »
Buried deep in this summer’s Latitude Festival line up was a curious outpost from a very different cultural moment. The three-day event’s insufferable up-from-London-middle-classness is a well worn riff for compares. But among the up-and-coming performance poets who provide the …
To its detractors the European Union is a faceless, unresponsive monolith, remote from the citizenry and indifferent their needs. That an EU Commissioner might listen to an individual’s voice, much less change European policy on the basis a single voter’s …
Face to faceless: going solo to thwart the eurocrats Read more »
The shock of navigating Mombasa’s roads, even in a giant Land Cruiser, was such that survival was my only concern for some time. The surge of vehicles, each trying to gain advantage by any means, was in a different order …