Elizabeth Jennings Elizabeth Jennings (1926 – 2001) was a beautiful poem-maker, always low-key, careful construction, often with rhyme and metre, and deep-seated passion. I have several of her books of poems, mostly published by Carcanet, and her Collected Poems 1967, published by Macmillan. Tessa Ransford Here are the last few lines of a poem called “Against the Dark”: […]

  Palais Ideal Tom Hubbard Special Delivery You can stumble and tumble upon it while you’re engaged with everyday banalities. It’s the incident, small in itself, which can lead to a triumph of creativity. It happened to a provincial French postman, Ferdinand Cheval, during one of his rounds: he lost his footing against a stone […]

‘My dear friends, seeing that I would not be permitted and the consequences would be too dangerous and distressing for me to tell you openly during my lifetime what I think about the government of men and about their religion and morals, I have decided, at least, to tell you after my death ’ So (in […]

  When I was twelve years old, we moved from Leeds to South West Scotland where my scientist father had taken a position in a research institute. Dad had come to England with the army at the end of the war and stayed on as a refugee, marrying my half English, half Irish mother. My […]

    Strasbourg, evening light   La piste des forts is the name of the bicycle path that goes from Strasbourg, in France, over the Rhine and into Germany. It’s well named. If you were not strong before you started you will be less so once you’ve done it. Huge trucks barrel along the main road and […]

  BAFFLED IN BETHLEHEM May 2010 They took my photograph beside That controversial wall.  Beneath the brutal sun we both Stood strong and straight and tall. A cross in white aslant on blue Marks the symbolic spot:  I posed beside a Saltire Sprayed by a left-wing Scot..  I hadn’t brought an aerosol And couldn’t even […]

  I recently had a first novel published – good old Shetland Times shouldered the risk – quite surprising myself in the process. I say ‘surprising myself’, because it was not my intention to write a novel. I’d tried writing short stories, but never felt comfortable in that medium. In fact, I’m useless at remembering […]

My latest radio play ‘The Lamp’ goes out on BBC Radio Four on 14th December, and has special status as ‘Play Of The Week’ which means that it will also be available as a podcast from Friday 16th for seven days. It was recorded on location at Perthshire’s charming Library of Innerpeffray  at the beginning of November, and I’m only now […]