Peter Warner in 1968 with the real-life ‘Lord of The Flies’ boys Rutger Bregman’s brilliant new book Humankind is an exposé on centuries...

Gaslighting We watched Gaslight the other day; a classic black and white thriller made in 1944 and starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles...

Dwight D. Eisenhower signing something urgent and important I got in a bit of a ‘tiz’ one afternoon last week. I was in the garden and...

The False Mirror, 1928 by Rene Magritte I’m a very ‘visual’ person. I was always keen or art and trained as an architect so, whether it...

There’s been a flurry of stuff about outer space recently with the new landing on Mars. When I was growing up I assumed we would be...

“Breathing is one of the most important and vital acts we do.” So says the Guys and St Thomas’s Hospital website, and so it must be true....

Jo Cameron munching on super-hot chillies “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” I heard writer Matt Haig say on the radio last...

Edward Hopper – Automat In their book Engineering Happiness Rakesh Sarin and Manel Baucell introduced us to the equation “happiness...

January is still very much with us, and so are our resolutions, if we made any; still hanging on by their fingernails. It is slightly...

Salvador Dali- The Persistence of Memory Happy New Year! What was 2020 like for you? Do I need to ask?! What will 2021 bring? Of course...

Christmas is coming! Christmas is coming! We are now well into Advent and, in this weird, topsy-turvy year, Christmas is approaching with...

Schools of Yoga as Represented using Popular English Biscuits (and Madonna, who isn't really a separate school) Illustration by Jon...

‘We’ve had enough of experts...’ said Michael Gove a few years back. To be fair he was misquoted as he was interrupted mid-sentence and...

'Nobody's perfect' - the perfect ending of the magnificent 'Some Like it Hot' I was at a Mentor Training session on Zoom the other day...

The Limbic System- with thanks to the Kahn Academy The limbic system is a set of small anatomical structures that sit on top of the brain...

A phrase that gets used a lot nowadays is: “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Well, maybe that’s true, but strength, on its...

Marcus Aurelius 121 –180 AD I read a news story recently about a man in Croydon who was sacked by his employers, Lidl, for racially...

Most of us are lucky enough not to have worked on a factory assembly line, or relied on dull repetitive work to make a living. In my...

Snow Storm, Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth- JMW Turner 1842 In my other job as an architect I am always including contingencies. If I...

The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture, without error or confusion is, in itself, a nobler thing than...