I was thrilled when the actor – and very famous comedian – Mel Smith really liked a play I had written about Winston Churchill and Michael Collins in 1921, and was keen to act in it. He had been shown the script by Brian Gilbert, the film, theatre and TV director, who had become my … Continue reading →

Many introductions to Edna O’Brien start out by stating excitedly that when her first books were published in the early 1960s, they were banned because she so “scandalised her native Ireland”. I remember when Edna’s novels first appeared, and nobody I knew was at all scandalised by the beguiling stories of Cait and Baba in … Continue reading →

You can see why Madonna wanted to make a movie about Wallis Simpson, the Baltimore siren who captured the heart of a king. Here’s an American from a modest background who comes to London and gets cold-shouldered by the toffee-nosed types in the British establishment. And is disparaged by a hostile media. Yes, Madonna feels … Continue reading →

“Sex and the Single Girl”. The title said it all, and when Helen Gurley Brown’s book was published in 1962, the title itself was the sensation. Single girls weren’t supposed to have sex! Affirming such a liberty amounted, surely, to licence, not to mention licentiousness! It was a smart career move for Ms Gurley Brown, … Continue reading →

Now I turn to a spiritual leader I greatly admire: Lord Sacks, the Commonwealth Chief Rabbi, whose most recent publication is one of the most stimulating books I read in 2011. “The Great Partnership – God, Science and the Search for Meaning” is an erudite, but brilliantly readable, answer to the campaigning atheists of our … Continue reading →