After being asked to create some videos for a local library, I now have a YouTube channel. You can find a reading from my novel, an interview (without the interviewer, because we are in lockdown after all), and a couple of creative writing videos. I hope to add to these creative writing exercises over time,Continue reading “I’m now on YouTube”
Category Archives: Writing
A Limerick
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On hirpling and other great words
Yesterday I reviewed George Mackay Brown’s Pictures in the Cave but I didn’t mention his wonderful use of language. Brown certainly seemed to have some favourite words: “hirpling” appears twice in the book, for example, as does “lucent”. Other great words in Pictures in the Cave include “erne” and “crepitated”. So, with a little help from theContinue reading “On hirpling and other great words”
A kind review
Professor John Sullivan of Liverpool Hope University has sent me this kind review which he wrote for the Spring 2020 issue of Networking, an English Catholic education journal: Did Jesus go to school? By Roy Peachey (Redemptorist Publications, 2019) Pp.149; £9.95. This is an engaging, down-to-earth, original, wise and spiritual book about parents, children andContinue reading “A kind review”
More thoughts on the spectacular
Sight and blindness, both literal and metaphorical, are key themes in my novel, Between Darkness and Light. In this passage, for example, we see what Wang Weijun now experiences, having lost one eye in a childish game of William Tell:
Fishing for Koi with an Afghan Veteran
Since I’m focusing on Slow Education at the moment, I thought it might be worth reposting this article I wrote for First Things a while back: Throwing my bags into the car, I waved my wife and children a hasty goodbye and then reversed out of the drive, automatically turning on the radio as I went.Continue reading “Fishing for Koi with an Afghan Veteran”
Please join me for Afternoon Tea
On Wednesday 13th May at 3pm, I’ll be at Merstham Library (virtually of course) to answer questions about my novel, Between Darkness and Light, and to read an extract from the book. I’ll send out further details closer to the date and hope you can join me there!
Teaching us gradually – an extract from one of my books
In The Creed in Slow Motion, Ronald Knox points out that “if it was an astonishing thing that our Lord should die, equally it was an astonishing thing that he should stay dead”.[1] We take it for granted that he stayed dead for three days but it is certainly not an event that could possiblyContinue reading “Teaching us gradually – an extract from one of my books”
An Invitation
On Wednesday 1st April, I shall be giving a talk at Redhill Library, Surrey, about my novel, Between Darkness and Light, and the amazing story of the Chinese Labour Corps in World War I that appears in its pages. The coffee morning lasts from 10.30 – noon and I would be delighted if you wereContinue reading “An Invitation”
The Writing Revolution
It can be a dispiriting experience reading the first drafts of students’ personal statements – it can also be dispiriting to read the fifteenth draft but that’s another matter – because many students simply don’t write very well. Their grammar is creaky, their vocabulary is limited, and their paragraphing is all over the place.
