Eighty years ago, the Germans committed one of their most heinous crimes, in Kyiv, Ukraine. This extract from my novel “Magnetite” may be fiction, but the facts of the tragedy have been respected.
Everybody had been expecting it, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact notwithstanding. His sister Olga had come for a visit…
This is an extract from my forthcoming novel Tambalacoque
The fact that Robert Surcouf was named captain in his teens _ he was nineteen and a half _ shows what a unique individual he must have been. He had been the Royal Navy’s biggest headache for over twenty years, capturing…
(i) The batter
1 1/2 cup gram flour (200cc). AKA besan
1 cup water (150 ml)
Pinch of baking powder
High BP oil like sunflower, rapeseed or corn oil (not olive oil). The best is rice oat oil!
1/2 teasp salt
Black pepper to taste.
Mix thoroughly until…
……………………..Portrait of the poetess by Laszlo………………………
Anna de Noailles wrote two poems which it seems appropriate to air in October. …
A scatological poem
A prism will split white light into seven hues
Red, orange, yellow, green, violet and the two blues
My intestines will also split the foods I eat
Red if I indulge in cherries or pickled beet
Blue when I go overboard with blueberries
And yellow when I…
Mario was a Querdenker*, a plonker
An anti-vaxxer, a climate denier
A far-right fanatic and activist
A rabid racist white supremacist
He was also a budding alcoholic
Who led a life chaotic and shambolic.
As he drove past the signpost Idar-Oberstein
He remembered he needed beer and wine
For Saturday…
Between two and three in the afternoon
Buses are rare and come once in a blue moon.
At the Bus Stop in front of Usher Hall
There are two men, one tall, one rather small.
The small chap plays a game on his i-phone
Whilst the taller one makes a…
………………………….. Haroon the apprentice tailor ……………………….
First, dear friends, I will begin by telling you about the Caliph. It was no less than our venerated Haroun al Rashid who started the tradition. He used to dress in poor man’s garb and go out incognito in the night, into the haunts…
Our beloved country with the wise and generous Saddam Hussein Abdel Majeed al-Tikriti …
may he rot in gehenna!
… at the helm, was not always so prosperous and so happy. When he is not on the scene, his sons Qusay and Uday, handsome as princes, who never sleep watch…
…
Pierre de Ronsard is among the earliest known French poet. He was born in 1524, in a family of nobles. He was considered to be the lead-ing light of the Renaissance movement, Les Pléiades. …
