Life’s a drag

Glasgow, 1942. The Carl Rosa Opera Company was in town to perform Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Tickets had been snapped up by local people – including many who didn’t really know what an opera was. The

The first five pages of my new novel, Small Acts of Resistance, a love story set during the First World War, have taken a somewhat circuitous route to print. Their journey into being started over twen

There is something pleasant in the thought that joviality will reign to-morrow in such grim homes as London workhouses,” a reporter for the West Londoner wrote on Christmas Eve 1870. “There will be an

MISS, I say hold on!” a distant male voice called. Briefly glancing over her shoulder while emerging from Evelyn’s the furriers, Molly Warley smartened her pace and continued walking along London’s Sl

Have long wanted a chance to celebrate the Sex Pistols. Whatever you may make of Mr Rotten’s question to his last audience in America, “Ever got the feeling you’ve been had?”, the Pistols were great f

On a beautiful summer’s morning almost 110 years ago, men of the British Army stepped out into no-man’s land at 7.30am. It was 1 July 1916, and the start of what was then called ‘The Big Push’. With h