14th October 2015 Vancouver, Canada
“So what do you want to talk about?” My therapist looks at me over his half-moon glasses with a practiced benign smile, and strokes his greying beard.
Opposite him, on a couch large enough for my extended family, I tally the pros and cons of continuing. Why not? It’s my time after all. “LNG.”
1st October 2015 Vancouver, Canada
It is impossible to calculate wisdom. You can count the number of people in a room, add up the amount of peer reviewed publications, or years spent living among different cultures, even an average IQ. If you were minded, you could use these metrics to get an idea of whether you were surrounded by knowledge.
17th September 2015 Vancouver, Canada
It’s been 75 years since The Battle of Britain. Given that my daughter thinks the 1990s were the ‘olden days’, this is quite some time. Yet still we remember it, and rightly so. Not only because it’s important to honour those who sacrificed themselves for us, but because of the enduring legacy the Battle has […]
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13th August 2015 Toronto, Canada
Few people underestimate the scale of the challenge presented by dementia. The latest numbers are so large and terrifying that they start to lose meaning: 44 million people living with dementia worldwide, double this amount by 2030; a societal cost of £26 billion in England, treble this by 2030; 25 % of hospital beds in […]
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19th June 2015 Ottawa, Canada
This is an edited transcript of an interview I did with Bianca Gendreau from the Canadian Museum of History on the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta…
17th June 2015 Ottawa, Canada
Right across the globe, diplomats, citizens, scientists, artists and policy-makers are gathering and speaking with unanimity: climate change is a real challenge…
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21st May 2015 Toronto, Canada
If you didn’t, I’d thoroughly recommend it. It’s a dramatisation of Alan Turing and others’ work, capturing the herculean task that the code breakers of Bletchley Park undertook to help our war effort. Historians estimate that the code breakers shortened the war by two years and saved thousands of lives…
16th January 2015 Montreal, Canada
Paddington, the film, opens in Canada today. Although Winnie the Pooh is a household name here, Paddington has a lower profile in Canada…
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17th November 2014 Ottawa, Canada
In a quiet corner of Ottawa by the junction of Sussex Avenue and Stanley Drive, there stands a fine memorial to the Canadian Officers loaned to Great Britain during the Second World War…
26th June 2014 Ottawa, Canada
To mark Formula 1’s Canadian Grand Prix from 4-8 June in Montreal our Consulate-General held its first ever series of GREAT Britain events. The results were……Formidable (best repeated with a French accent)…