Opinion

Here I comment on a wide range of issues from education to politics, the arts and more. I welcome lively and opinionated debate, so please leave your comments.

  • You murdered me — Rachel Cusk’s ‘Arlington Park’

  • Sweet Bird Of Disaster

  • BBC London News Debate

    I was a guest on Thursday night on BBC London News, talking about whether children between the ages of 10-14 should be put in prison. The other guest was Enver Solomon, the Deputy Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. He was arguing that children should be given therapy instead of being punished. […]

  • Readings and parties

    On Saturday and Sunday night, there were two major parties for the festival. Saturday’s party was hosted by GQ and Wasafiri,

  • The Limbs of Shiva — Elephanta Island

    I was told that it wasn’t safe to drink coca-cola because the monkeys would swoop down and snatch it out of my hand. I chucked my can in the bin, and followed my guide in the Elephanta caves. I had spent an hour on the boat, feeling the cool breeze against my forehead, and looking […]

  • My Talk — Saturday

    Blake Morrison raises his eyes to the heavens as he looks at the title to my event over breakfast. So you’re speaking about the role of the writer, are you Francis? That shouldn’t take long to sort out,’ he says with a wry smile. Blake is a renowned poet, whose anthology of British Poetry in […]

  • First Day in Mumbai

    The drilling next door made the whole of my hotel room vibrate. I immediately regretted not buying the long, deep earplugs I saw at the airport. I had slept for three hours and I knew now that that was my lot. And yet, I didn’t know where to go next. Fortunately, Sunita, an organiser from […]

  • The Buddha in Colombo

    The Buddha looked down at me in the murky temple. Nirpal Dhaliwal, a fellow writer going to speak at the Kitab Festival with me, explained that this was a good religion, a gentle religion, one that didn’t specialise in making you feel bad about yourself. I looked at the elephant munching at the sticks of […]

  • The Green Moss Code

    He was staring at me, his face emerging from the rock, his cheeks covered in silky moss, his lips puckered green and glistening, his eyes sad and tearful. I stared back him at him, amazed. I hadn’t expected this. I hadn’t expected to go on what I felt would be a mundane tramp around the […]

  • The Ultimate Stress Buster: a quick dip in the Welsh Sea

    Theo ran up and down the beach shouting. He couldn’t believe I was going to do it. The sun was shining, but the breeze was brisk, rippling against my goose-pimpled skin. The waves glittered before me, saying ‘Come unto me, I will wash away all the stress, and you will be a new teacher, a […]

  • The Famous Biographer and the Cheeky Waiter

    It’s a cold, rainy Friday evening. I scooter through town, clattering along bus lanes and over the pavement, nod a polite hello to my great-great grandfather’s sculpture Eros at Picadilly Circus, and arrive at a posh hotel, where a famous biographer and his husband greet me warmly in the lobby. I’ve known him for years […]

  • New suit, new tie, new person

    First day back after half-term, and everyone is astonished at how smart I am: I am wearing a new black suit with those trendy small lapels and a longish cut, a new swish tie with silky red stripes, and I have a neat, short back and sides haircut. L in the office says I look […]

  • Scooter At The Opera

    I took my scooter to the Opera this week. It was the first time my scooter had ever been there, and only my second trip. I asked the check-in lady whether she had ever checked in a muddy push scooter at the Royal Opera House before. She said with a wry smile that she hadn’t. […]

  • Lost Worlds

    My father remembers how different things were when he was a child growing up in Northumberland: ‘I can remember when there was a bakery at Christon Bank, in the village near where my parents lived. I can still recall the smell of baking bread early in the morning, and buying the bread from the bakery […]

  • Racing Ahead in Iran

    On Saturday my stepmother and her sister, Shaheen, invited us to dinner. They cooked us Iranian food: amazing rice dishes and soup with saffron and pasta, yoghurt and cucumber sauce, fried aberguine. It was delicious. My stepmother is Iranian, as is Shaheen, who is visiting for a few months. Shaheen had invited around the son […]

  • Panic!

    Yesterday I saw Chicken Little with my five-year-old. I had been expecting to hate it but I actually laughed out loud at the beginning of the film. In it, Chicken Little — just like Chicken Licken — panicks when he thinks a piece of the sky has fallen on his head, waking up the whole […]

  • New Website

    This is the day that I launch my website!

  • Terrorists attack

    Finally, they have come. They have attacked. At the latest count, there are nearly forty dead. It is a traumatic time. I am in school when it happens. I see it come over the phone in the form of a text message from the Guardian. Explosions near Aldgate. Other people at work have heard differently. […]

  • Terrorists attack

    Finally, they have come. They have attacked. At the latest count, there are nearly forty dead. It is a traumatic time. I am in school when it happens. I see it come over the phone in the form of a text message from the Guardian. Explosions near Aldgate. Other people at work have heard differently. […]