I am suffering from Deadline-itis. Two deadlines glaring at me with fanged intentions. As always during these stressful moments, it seems that all the world apart from me is in holiday mode; either on holiday or about to depart. I go out so rarely at present due to the pressure of work that when I…
By the time you read this, the 68th Cannes Film Festival will have packed up its wares and the pantechnicons will be back on the road. The awards will have been handed out and celebrated at illustrious parties, Elton John will have hosted his annual Aids event, and the stars will be on planes flying…
It has been reported in the press this week that a replica of the Grotte Chauvet has been created. It will be open to the public by the time you read this. The original, containing thousands of prehistoric animal and figure drawings, will no longer be accessible to visitors because our human presence is putting…
I have been focusing quite a bit on war recently so I thought for this month’s blog I would choose a subject that is closer to home and of a lighter aspect. A love story. This true story is set along the Côte d’Azur, the Blue Coast, but it began in the north of France…
Last month I wrote a little about the events surrounding the Charlie Hebdo massacres in Paris along with my reflections, observations while travelling in Algeria seven years ago. I am continuing along a similar theme today: Algeria and a broad brushstroke of the events that led to the Algerian War of Independence. The French colonial…
I am writing this ahead of my regular blog date because I will be away on a work commitment and possibly without internet. Much could happen between today and the 26th… However… This month of January has been a tragic opening to the year of 2015. One of the murdered Charlie Hebdo team collaborated with…
On Christmas Eve 1914 in northern France a frost set in. It had been raining for weeks, filling the trenches to waist height with water, soaking spirits, drowning hope. So acute was this drop in temperature, that it froze solid the soldiers’ great coats and hardened their boots. The men themselves were “frozen to the…
This month, on 9th November, six weeks after Scotland voted to remain a part of Great Britain, ‘a self-determination referendum’ was held in Catalonia. The citizen participation process on Catalonia’s political future was originally the ‘Catalan Independence Referendum’ but was rebranded as a ‘popular consultation’ after the original was suspended by the Constitutional Court of…
I have just returned from a brief stay in Palermo and the western coast of Sicily. Autumn at the heart of the Mediterranean can hardly be bettered. The grape harvests have been completed, the olives are soon to picked and the weather is usually absolutely splendid. I first visited Sicily in 2005. This trip kept…
Many years ago, in a period of my life that is almost history now, while I was filming the TV series All Creatures Great and Small, I was invited to take part in a Save the Whale rally which was to be held in Trafalgar Square. It was a Sunday. A high stage had been…
Tangerines remind me of childhood Christmases. Can you recall that tangy aroma once you’d pierced the skin with your thumb, peeled it away and the juice began to spray out like an ignited sparkler? Dates were rare in my childhood home. Amber-coloured like big sad eyes, dry and sugary, they arrived in elongated oval boxes,…
I wrote this for the History Girls blog over two months ago. It was posted today… Planting olive trees in the West Bank : http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-tree-of-peace-by-carol-drinkwater.html Carol
On 12th June, I attended the Prix Fitzgerald award ceremony at the Hôtel Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pins. The hotel looks out over the Mediterranean and has views all along this famous stretch of French Riviera. I live inland of this smart address on a rundown olive farm and although I am no longer one for…