I am fifty-five years old and I am English. These are the salient facts about me. Just like yours, my life to date has had highs and lows, joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats. The same is true of following the beautiful game. That truth was captured self-deprecatingly in the sometimes maligned and misunderstood Three… Read More Fifty-Five Years of Hurt: A Whole Life Waiting for England to Win
What if your words were dangerous? If they caused physical, visceral reactions in those hearing them? On Discovering My Poetry Causes Hysteria is published today by Fiction Kitchen Berlin (https://fictionkitchen.berlin/2021/01/16/on-discovering-my-poetry-causes-hysteria/). Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
It’s not every day that one is presented with the opportunity to spend a little one-on-one time with the President of the United States. Indeed, most people will never have the honor of such an opportunity, and for many who do, it will happen only once. For me, quite unexpectedly, that honor arrived today. Now,… Read More Donald Trump: My Part In His Downfall
I have long been fascinated with the passage of time, whatever that means. That’s one reason I love the literary magazine, Twist in Time. Issue 10, out today, includes my short story This Is The Room Where We Tell Stories About The Future. Read it here: https://twistintimemag.com/this-is-the-room-where-we-tell-stories-about-the-future-by-jonathan-payne/. Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash
Turnpike is a beautifully presented and relatively new literary magazine that deserves your support. I’m delighted that my short story, THE GOLDEN HOUR, appears in issue number 8, which is published today. Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash
Have you always assumed that time flows, like water? I have. And that it flows from the past to the future? Me, too. And that it flows at a uniform speed? Same here. These are all popular beliefs about the nature of time. And all of them, according to the brilliant theoretical physicist, Carlo Rovelli,… Read More Tomorrow, A Physicist Sat On Your Sofa
It’s been such a great year for music that I have abandonded my usual practice of dropping a top ten list into the void of social medias in favour of an attempt at reviewing each album in a single line. With the exception of my choice for album of the year, which deserves a few… Read More The Music of the Future Arrived Early: My Top 10 Record Albums of 2018
Back in the spring, the audio version of my short story, On the Crest of a Wave, was published by the lovely people of the North London Story Festival as part of their series, The Writer’s Journey. You can listen to it at their YouTube channel. For those who prefer to read, here’s the text. Time rushes… Read More On the Crest of a Wave
It’s twelve months exactly today since Heather Heyer was murdered in the leafy, historic streets of her home town, Charlottesville, VA, by James Alex Fields Jr., a neo-Nazi who had travelled all the way from Ohio to join the first ‘Unite the Right’ rally. Nazi Pride might be a better description of the event. His… Read More Nazi Pride: three things we’re getting wrong about free speech
Fellow fans of the Three Lions will tonight probably be feeling as disappointed as I do at coming so close to a first World Cup final in 52 years, only to crash out with semi-final defeat to Croatia. Given that it’s 28 years since we were last in a World Cup semi-final, one could argue… Read More It’s Kieran Trippier’s primary school wot lost it
