I highlighted before half term the importance of trying to keep everything in its proper context and not to catastrophize unnecessarily. This is obviously not a new phenomenon, but it always seems to make us feel better if we think we have found previously untapped wisdom.

Today is my daughter’s last official day of school. Along with the rest of the Upper Sixth cohort, her study leave begins this afternoon and she will have no more formal lessons before her A Level exams start next week. She is taking four subjects – English, history, maths and further ma...

A lot has happened in the twenty-five years since I last saw the Crazy Gang of the old Wimbledon FC play, the most significant of which was the club’s demise, the launch of a franchise team called MK Dons and the founding of AFC Wimbledon – most of which happened in the first few years o...

It is not easy to find a quick answer when you are asked if you enjoyed a trip to the battlefields of the First World War. There were many aspects that were very enjoyable, for example the companionship of colleagues, with the opportunity for different conversations from those possible at work; gett...

It’s a shame Yuval Noah Harari does not have a couple of silent letters somewhere in his name, i.e. a ‘K’ in front of Noah and a ‘W’ in front of Harari. If he did, I could just refer to him as ‘YKW’, aka ‘You Know Who’, every time I quote somethi...

They say that nostalgia is not what it used to be, but I am always concerned when people spend too long talking about how much better it used to be in the past. I have never believed in any sort of golden age in time gone by and I give little credence to any such ideas. If you remember my plug for t...