The Practical Creative

Once up on a time, a book helped me to find myself. Not in a spiritual, self-awareness sense. No. In a literal, actual, physically-located sense.

Seriously, you couldn't make it up.

I'd moved into a friend's flat in west London, house-sitting for a while as I helped prep...

Just over a fortnight ago, someone entered two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and gunned down close to a hundred people, young and old, male and female, in such utter cold blood that it's incomprehensible to nearly everyone else how one human could do this to ot...

I'm not sure it necessarily comes with being a writer, as I've edited plenty of books that were beautifully yet incorrectly written. It possibly has more to do with where, when and how we were educated. 

Wherever it comes from, I have a confession.

I'm a grammaholic...

I've always been a library fan. Ever since my poor wee mother had to haul home a shopping trolley full of fiction for me, I've adored everything about them. The scholarly tone. The papery aroma. The shelves full of glorious, untapped adventure, emotion and possibility....

Ah, World Book Day. One of my favourite days of the year, not least because I love books ... and so what's not to like about a day that is dedicated to them?

I'm not sure that it actually is Book Day around the World. I suspect it may be UK and Ireland only, and I'm not...

I came across Monica Lewinsky's TED talk recently, in which she speaks incredibly eloquently and with great candour about the negative impact of the internet in ensuring that scandal never goes away.

As she puts it, she was 'Patient Zero' for this disease - for disease ...