Ian on Sunday

Even at this Christmas time, the spirit grows weary with the weight of woe in the world at large and at home in Guyana.

The great poets are easily recognizable; in a moment the minds knows, the heart feels, the spirit senses a quality involving silence and attention.

The debate on improving educational standards never ends. And in this debate I am glad to see it is generally realised that new school buildings and classroom furniture are only a very small part of what matters.

I have been re-reading Seamus Heaney, great Irish poet and Nobel Laureate.

I do not like reminiscing about the old days; that immediately marks you as entering your dotage.

Most people are cowards.  Most people don’t want to trouble trouble lest trouble troubles them. 

I am sometimes accused by bloggers, and often gently told by friends, that I am inclined to view life, and particularly life in Guyana, through a glass not darkly, but one beautifully rose-coloured.

Nothing worthwhile can be achieved without the right people in place to convert words into action.

It is terrible how easily we bear the suffering of others.

When one thinks about it, the concept of “Government” is a strange one for it assumes as its fundamental premise that certain men and women – human beings like you and me – can and should be allowed to take upon themselves the right to direct the rest of us what to do, presumably for our own good.

There is no connection between sexual mores and job performance. Many of the greatest leaders in history were unbridled lechers.

If you think about it carefully it seems impossible to reconcile two things which most people would very much like to believe – one, that they enjoy free will and in some ultimate sense are masters of their fate, and, two, that the God of all creation is omnipotent and has a master plan for us all.

Headlines which constantly remind us of lethal crime heighten the sense of life’s fragility in all of us.

It is frustrating, not to say humiliating, to think how much one is missing by not knowing any language except one’s own.

Consider yourself fortunate if you are right 51% of the time.

When I was young, and benefited not only from a fresh and eagerly absorptive mind but also from a strong belief that an eternity of life stretched in front of me, I loved to read big books, books of immense length.

Sveinsson Knut, Canute the Great, King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018 and King of Norway from 1030 until he died in 1035, was perhaps the most successful and effective of the early rulers of England.

If one had the power to give a child a single gift but no other, the gift to choose would be a love of reading.

In my 84th year the time for ambition is long past.

T20 cricket, the way it has developed, is unbalanced in favour of batsmen.