Books, Poems, Thoughts
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With the current government’s tendency to want to divide people into sheep and goats – the ‘hardworking family’ or the ‘shirker’ (the latter previously known as the ‘undeserving poor’) – I find myself wondering which category I fit into, as a freelance writer and writing consultant who lives alone. Last night, for instance, I had
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As promised, here is my poem about Ivor Gurney Beside the son of his dearest friend, Their names linked still in death, A Celtic cross and an inscription to Ivor Gurney: a lover and maker of beauty. In low land between Cotswold and Malvern, A place he might have chosen, He knows the silence after
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The wonderful concert I went to last week at The Hall, St Botolph without Bishopsgate, as part of the Song in the City series, reminded me of how significant Ivor Gurney is in the pantheon of 20th-century English composers. His songs are gems, in the tradition of earlier composers such as John Dowland – succinct,
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Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia from 1762 until her death in 1796, was a great believer in ‘maxims’ – short, pithy instructions aimed at improving both herself and her subjects. She was also, at least until her last years, a very good manager of people. So what could she teach today’s managers and HR
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Zoe Williams wrote in The Guardian on Boxing Day about the opportunity presented by the current housing crisis: “The housing crisis is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. We need more social housing, we need a more vigorous construction industry, and we need things for a government to invest in, rather than rounds of quantitative
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It was my birthday last week and, in one way of looking at it, too many years have gone by, without enough achieved, and it’s all downhill from here. A few books written – but not enough, and not successful enough – and too much time spent in ‘the whole corroding business of administration’, as
Virginia Rounding: Author, editor, proofreader, indexer 