LATEST POSTS #AMTHINKING
Why we need Thrutopias…
Imagine a future where our great grandchildren look back and say, ‘Yes, it was hard. Yes, they made mistakes. Yes, they left it way, way too late, but that was because they didn’t know what to do. And my goodness, when they had the visions, they threw themselves into making them happen. And we’re here now, living lives we love, because they took the risk to change the way things worked…
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I Always Wanted to be a Spy…
Every novel begins with a single idea. Or in this case, a lifelong obsession with spies and spying and the outstanding courage of the women who fought behind the lines in World War Two.
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Exploding rats and inbred pigeons
British ingenuity at it’s best – only the best-dressed agents carried a rat-skin for emergencies…
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Boudica, Boudicca, Boadicea – What’s in a name?
Where did the name Boudica come from? How should we spell it and pronounce it? And is it even a name at all…?
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Lucid Dreaming: Ancient Skill or Modern Fad?
Everyone dreams: not everyone dreams lucidly, but it’s there for those who want to step into a world (many worlds) where anything is possible. Here is the gateway to all possible futures, and the answers, if we persist, to all possible questions.
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Druids, drugs & the real Britannia
Who were the Druids, and were they anything like the much-scarred head druid Veren and Divis, the outcast with the demon problem in the new TV series Britannia?
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Breaking the Legacy of Rome
As long as we’re not trying to pretend that Britannia is historically accurate, it’s brilliant…
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The old gods and the new
“We won’t defeat these people by fighting their warriors. We beat them by fighting their gods. We need to kill their gods.”
So says David Morrisey in his role as Aulus Plautius, the Roman general charged, at least outwardly, with the subjugation of Rome’s latest source of plunder and taxes in the new TV series Britannia.
The Celts, Women & Sex
“We consort openly with the best of men. You allow yourselves to be debauched in secret by the vilest.” – so said the consort of the Gaulish king to Julia Augustus, wife of the Emperor…
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Dreaming Awake
For those who have no idea what dreaming is, or are curious as to the nature of shamanic practice, the following outlines my current thinking.
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On Creativity, Storytelling and Life
I’ve been thinking about creativity, and the nature of creation, and storytelling, and life…
Read MoreOn Radio and Prizes
So – the brief ten minutes of fame on Radio 4’s Open Book has been and gone
Read MoreBra-less is best
Some of us have always known this – but at last we have actual scientific proof that bras are worse than useless.
Read MoreThe Matilda Effect: unconscious bias in science and reading
There was a time when I thought I wasn’t a feminist. I was young, gay (in all senses) and worked in the male-dominated field of veterinary surgery and truly believed that as long as I could anaesthetise the next horse and get it safely back on its feet without killing it – which is a lot harder than it might sound; horses start to die the moment you lay them on their sides and if you lie them on their backs, the window is far, far smaller – then my gender, indeed my sexual orientation, was of no consequence.
Read MoreThe Value of Fiction
Ian McEwan wrote a lengthy piece in yesterday’s Grauniad. Reading it reminds me why I am beyond glad that my academic years were spent in Veterinary science, not English literature, or, heaven forfend, in a Creative Writing course where they (I assume?) teach perfectly sane men and women that the following constitutes reasonable thought:
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