Ian McDonald

The saddest sight in Guyana is the children you see on the pavements begging, idling, cursing, selling cigarettes and sweets, most of them on their way to perdition of one sort or another.

When I was a boy there was an old, tall, craggy-faced priest from Scotland who used to preach on Sundays at the parish church in Tunapuna in Trinidad.

I was reading the magazine Planet the other day and came across an article in it by the Welsh poet and playwright Damian Gorman which made an impression on me.

Local election campaigning is presumably underway. The exchanges will not be civil, to say the least.

Bertolt Brecht was one of the most celebrated playwrights of the 20th cen-tury.

I wish I could convey in particular to young people, whose mental appetites seem whetted so easily these days by the transitory and the trashy, the quiet depths, the delights, the leaping excitements of great poetry.

The Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge is one of the most famous science buildings in the world.

A friend asked me how important a part poetry plays in my life.

At eighty-two years of age one must expect to factor attendance at funerals into one’s monthly (weekly?)

Running anything – whether it is a national government, vast state industry, world-circling multi-national, small family business, or private club – involves making choices.

When I was a young and bursting with energy and exuberant life-force I was eager to travel far and wide, more than ready to range around the world discovering new places and meeting people of every kind, outlook and temper.

Not long ago, in one of his endlessly interesting and instructive ‘So It Go’ columns, Dave Martins lamented the lack of recognition given to our heroes and heroines.

It makes no sense trying to measure the joy which our grandchildren Jacob and Zoey give to my wife and I.

Christmas is about the unique drama of a miraculous birth intended to save all mankind.

I regret I write with grimness in this festive season. Perhaps it is good to remember that for countless millions in the world this is, as T S Eliot reminded us in the greatest poem ever written about the birth of Christ, “Just the worst time of the year.”

Nothing can compare with the beauty and warmth of life at home.

A great part of Brazil has been in the grip of one of the worst droughts in its history: reservoirs running dry, water strictly rationed, particularly in Sao Paulo.

We should beware the over-mighty state. A state that gathers all powers to itself drains initiative away from where it does most good ‒ at the local level, at the level of the small group, the family, the individual.

For God’s sake, what is going on? Remember: A young Pakistani girl is shot in the head for trying to educate herself and others like her.

Reading is a good friend, whether the wind blows good or ill.