Emily Thornberry and the importance of proof
Emily Thornberry might be a snob. For all I know, she may spend her evenings gawping in horror at Coronation Street, muttering to her husband, ‘Darling, look at those feral commoners from atop Watford...
View ArticleNew Year’s Reading Resolutions
I’ve never done this before, but I thought I would this year. Here’s a list of some of the books I hope/plan to read in 2015: Hidden Knowledge by Bernadine Bishop Timoleon Vieta Come Home by Dan...
View ArticleAn Old Poem
Going through the contents of my forthcoming Collected Poems (Carcanet, May 2015) I found this one that I’d totally forgotten about, from before I was a crime writer… I think I wrote it in about 1992....
View ArticleMarrying the Ugly Millionaire: New and Collected Poems
In May, Sophie’s seven collections of poetry are being published together for the first time, as well as 27 new poems that have not appeared in a book before. If you’d like to pre-order Sophie’s new...
View ArticleTactical Voting
People disagree about tactical voting, but do they disagree in the way they should? All discussions I’ve heard go something like this: Fred: ‘I’m voting LibDem even though I’m Labour. Because the...
View ArticleReading Group Questions for The Telling Error
1. Is Nicki a sympathetic character? Is it her own fault that she’s the way she is, or someone else’s? Does the novel have an attitude to character and behaviour that goes beyond that sort of moral...
View ArticleTim Hunt: in the light of recent updates, an important question
(NB This blog post first appeared on my Author page at Goodreads – because I couldn’t access my website on the day I wrote it!) Anyone who follows me on Twitter will already know my opinion about Sir...
View ArticleWhy it’s still vital to defend Tim Hunt
I wrote this blog post yesterday, uncertain of whether I would do anything with it. Then this morning I saw that Professor Mary Collins, Sir Tim Hunt’s wife, had put a video of him being inspiring and...
View ArticleBoston Globe piece wrong about Tim Hunt
There are massive inaccuracies about Tim Hunt in this Boston Globe piece, so I wrote to the author as follows. I am naive enough to hope he might read it! ************ Tom, there are massive factual...
View ArticleTim Hunt and the Brightly Coloured Shirts of Science
The Tim Hunt saga is still raging, with new blog posts still being written and new information still coming to light. In response to Sue Nelson’s blogpost on the subject from a few months ago, which...
View ArticleNew poem!
DID YOU PUT ON A SHIRT? I blogged about Tim Hunt again. I argued hard and long, But other women, other men, Might also need a strong Defence, and so I’m asking folks In Harlem, Hull, Hong Kong – Have...
View Article18 Fantastic Holiday Reads for 2016: The Shortlist
A Game For All The Family is on the Cooperative Travel Fantastic Holiday Reads shortlist! http://www.co-operativetravel.co.uk/blog/18-fantastic-holiday-reads-for-2016-the-shortlist/
View ArticleCorbyn Refuses To Go
(Refrain line suggested by Steve Mosby) It’s the year 2147. Cancer’s cured & we’ve privatized snow And a robot’s your neighbour Yet still, same old Labour For Corbyn refuses to go. ‘Look, this...
View ArticleMy 2016 Book Awards!
These are ‘awards’ in the loosest sense, as there are no actual prizes! And ‘2016/the year’ is also used loosely here, because these are not so much the Books of the Year as the Books of my year –...
View Article
