Nothing about being human is black and white. So why do we keep acting as if it is?

angela findlay6 Comments

This month, through no planning of my own, my book – In My Grandfather’s Shadow – seemed to go on tour.   

On 22nd July it reached its fourth anniversary since publication and, as if to celebrate each year, four interesting invitations came my way. From a prison, a history festival, a German magazine and a school.

This week I spent a day in prison, moving between hot rooms filled with men, each clutching a copy. They had been distributed by Give A Book through its Prison Reading Groups programme. The Shannon Trust, an indispensable charity promoting literacy in prisons, had invited me to speak to two groups. Many of the men had not only read the book but had annotated its pages with notes and carefully prepared lists of questions and comments. 

Do you think there is a way through guilt? 

How do you find out what has gone on in one generation that might need resolving?

Should there be more art in prisons and schools? 

I feel so fortunate to have access to these pockets of society that most people never encounter. Prisons hum with life, attitude and testosterone. They also carry the unmistakable stench of waste: wasted money, wasted opportunity, wasted time and wasted human potential. Not because of those living or working inside, but because of how the system is designed. Cuts to funding and staff, overcrowding, and a punitive undercurrent in policymaking have created conditions that prevent prisons from functioning as they could. 

Award winner, Koestler Arts, 2022

As I have often found over the decades, I can speak more freely inside these locked institutions than outside them. The people who live and work there generally have more experience and understanding of the darker side of human nature. The parts of ourselves most of us prefer not to acknowledge and thankfully do not act upon, but that nonetheless reside in us all.

The great Russian writers understood this well. 

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”   Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from The Gulag Archipelago.         

Human beings are capable of both extraordinary good and extreme evil. If we accepted that as a foundational truth, our society might paradoxically become more compassionate and more honest. Instead, we are encouraged to project evil onto others and goodness onto ourselves. 

We see this in our culture of remembrance, the subject I will be exploring with Henry Montgomery and James Holland at Chalke Valley History Festival this Sunday. We see it in the media, as I was recently reminded while being interviewed by one of Germany’s most respected magazines, Der Spiegel, for an article marking the 85th Anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s invasion of Russia in 1941 and the war of annihilation that followed – a war in which my Wehrmacht grandfather took part. We see it in every form of discrimination. And we see it in our criminal justice system. 

I understand why, in Germany, nuance remains difficult when discussing those dreadful years shaped by Nazi ideology and its hierarchy of human worth… and worthlessness. Germany cannot be seen to relativise any aspect of that history, just as it cannot be seen to pass critical judgment on Israel. I have a huge amount of empathy for the country’s predicament. However…

In some ways, a serious criminal is in a similar situation, albeit on an individual rather than a national scale. Yet just as our prison system risks trapping people in a criminal identity with adverse outcomes, so certain aspects of Germany are in danger of remaining stuck in a ‘They were the guilty perpetrators’ identity. With ever fewer contemporary witnesses and widespread silence still prevailing within families, it becomes increasingly easy to project total accountability – or evil – onto whole groups and categories, without acknowledging the impossible choices ordinary individuals – people like us – often faced, and how their decisions were driven by fear, survival, ignorance, weakness or a genuine belief they were serving a greater good. 

We judge them at our peril. 

And what good does judgment do anyway? Of course, crimes must be judged and punished. But the person? 

Writing In My Grandfather’s Shadow required me to walk many metaphorical miles in my grandfather’s boots. I wanted to understand both the man and the circumstances in which he lived. What choices did he really have? What alternatives, as a career soldier, were available to him? These were questions I had learned to ask through my work with prisoners. Not to excuse or justify, but to comprehend how essentially decent people can become culpable of terrible deeds.

Faced with another person’s unique situation – their education, upbringing, family background, psychological resources, personality and opportunities – would I truly have made different decisions? 

With all that is going on in the world today, we may one day be put to the test. 

Whenever I visit prisons to talk about my book, I notice the effect non-judgment can have on the men – and as 96% of the prison population is male, it is usually men I am talking to. I witness defences softening. People begin to think differently about themselves and others.  Self-reflection emerges. Empathy. A dawning of hope and the possibility of change which ultimately is the possibility of a better society for all of us. 

It is not rocket science. But it does require a shift away from our current culture of disconnection, blame, decontextualisation and blinkered thinking.

Perhaps that is why the fourth invitation, to speak at a school, touched me so deeply. A pupil had read my book and been sufficiently affected by it to pass it on to her headmaster. He read it, wrote to me and invited me to give the speech at their forthcoming Speech Day. For someone who was expelled from school, this is indeed an honour! As well as academic achievement, he wants to instil these same values of inclusion and compassion in his students to help equip them to find their own individual ways into the world. 

It’s only a start. But it is a start. And we need to start.

Forthcoming events:

Chalke Valley History Festival

Hatchards, Piccadilly. In Conversation: Alice Jolly and Rachel Seiffert with Angela Findlay

I am delighted to be chairing this event with two of my favourite authors on Wednesday 22nd July at 6:30pm at Hatchards, Piccadilly. Both books relate to the Nazi and World War II years in Germany / Austria.

Book here

Rock, Paper, Scissors and AI

angela findlay6 Comments

Last week I met a man who is drafting a book along the same themes as mine. He too has German roots and his is a remarkable story that I hope will one day be published. We discussed the fascinating process of researching historical content, and the more arduous one of finding an agent or publisher. In my case, both involved huge quantities of time, trawling through books, websites and the brick-like tome that is the handbook for writers. For him, information and guidance were more at his fingertips in the form of AI. The difference got me thinking. 

Part of me feels glad to have completed In My Grandfather’s Shadow before the tools of Chat GPT or Open AI became widely available, or indeed unavoidable in the case of search engines. The temptation to constantly tweak my own imperfect writing voice according to the suggestions of an entity that has absorbed millions of other people’s work – including my own by now – might have been irresistible. But how much time I would have saved. And online searches might have discovered my grandfather’s movements on the Italian front, all records of which at the time lay buried in the silence of Italy’s complex and unresolved history of collaboration and resistance. 

There is no doubt AI is unbelievably brilliant and useful in many areas. I am not anti-AI per se. But when it comes to making art, I worry about the loss of essential skills and faculties to a desire for ease and instant answers. What happens when colours and shapes are made by the same keyboard clicks that generate words, mathematical equations, spreadsheets, drone attacks or hacks? Of course, great art will come out it. Artists have always embraced modern technologies and fashioned them to express their own visions. David Hockney’s iPad works spring to mind. But how many of our multi-sensory human skills – coordination, balance, weight, instinctive rightness – might we lose?

While AI chatbots are becoming terrifyingly advanced, Grayson Perry’s insightful 2-parter on Channel 4 – Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future – reveals how physical robots are still lagging in emulating the complexities of simple actions we take for granted – like making a cup of tea. So much is involved to get brain and body to work together. When painting was part of my main profession, I revelled in the mixing of colours. Hands squeezed tubes, rinsed brushes, and spread paint onto canvas like buttering bread. Taste buds sprang into action, the tongue searching like a cook for the missing flavour… a little more darkness, a bit more warmth, maturity, or contrast. Colours needed to ‘sing’ particular harmonies or discords. The eye would journey over a terrain of textures while the nose inhaled the same oily odours of centuries of masters gone by. 

Maybe I am nostalgic. That could well be. Equally possible is that I am frustrated that though I have an all-singing iPad, I have not mastered the brilliant tools of Canva, Procreate or iMovie. Instead, I sit in my studio with scissors, glue, sticky fingers, and paper images strewn across the floor. I assemble and reassemble in contortions that resemble games of Twister. I destroy, lose and abandon works… often wishing there was a Command Z key I could tap to undo the error that led to ruination and the bin. 

I have no wish to be a fuddy-duddy doom monger like those who thought our heads would blow off when the motor car was introduced, or who mourned the loss of letters when the telephone was created… though there is loss as well as gain involved in both inventions. But my forthcoming exhibition CONVERSATIONS ACROSS TIME is distinctly handmade. And like IN PROCESS last autumn, it is experiential, small and intimate. 

Part of Stroud’s brilliant annual SITE Festival, it continues to tell the story of my intrepid great-great-aunt, Joan Margaret Legge, while exploring, in a variety of media, intergenerational relationships and the legacies of those who have gone before us.

I invite you to physically immerse yourself in The Vaults in Stroud Cemetery, or attend one of the events below that are linked to the themes explored. Or simply benefit from the advances in technology that will allow you to see some, (but not all) of it with a few clicks here from the comfort of your home! 

More INFO and TICKETS to events: Use QR codes below or click here: TALK… WALK… IN CONVERSATION

The easiest way to receive up-to-date information on Talks, Exhibitions and Events is to Sign Up to my occasional newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any point.

From a haven of peace to a global hot spot

angela findlay6 Comments

I had never been to the Middle East until December 2023, when I broke my journey to Australia with a week-long stopover. My brother has lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for over a decade, and it felt long overdue to visit his neck of the woods… or rather, his stretch of the desert. The impressions it made still persist. (More in this Blog)

One place in particular is currently in the forefront of my mind: the Musandam peninsula, perched at the northern tip of Oman, just two hours east of Dubai and 30 miles of sea from Iran. Cut off from the rest of the country, it is only accessible via the United Arab Emirates. 

My brother and I were heading there for two reasons. The first was pure thrill. The peninsula is home to the longest zip wire over water in the world. We flew across the 1770-metre stretch, delighting in the soft landscape and warm air once our initial screams and laughter had died down

The second reason was considerably quieter. Musandam’s coastline is carved into a pattern of beautiful fjords that have earned it the title ‘the Norway of Arabia’. These inlets – or khors – are so deep, they almost detach the limestone cliffs from the mainland, leaving them to float like islands into the Strait of Hormuz – a hotspot of current news, and the focus of one of the most irresponsible and avoidable conflicts in recent history. 

There is so much chatter and debate about this region across all media. It is heartbreaking and rage-inducing to imagine that life there is threatened, along with so much more. I don’t want to add to the noise, other than to invite you to join me on a dhow as I relive the peace, the people, the dolphins and fish, the light and gentle colours of what is, to me, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to.

May this war, and all the others in the region, end soon.

What a wonderful world…

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I feel like I should write about the US/Israel war on Iran – just in case it’s the start of another world war. Conflict and its lasting impact are themes of my blogs, after all. 

But I can’t quite bring myself to. Do you feel the same? That initial shock… then a deep sigh, a kind of eye-rolling weariness, an ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake…” followed by a quieter, heavier sadness: not again.

Perhaps being immersed in a vibrant community, in the arts, in nature and in inner processes – as many of you may be, in your own ways – offers a lens on world events that cuts through the noise of “facts” and “news” and brings the sheer idiocy of this war into sharp relief. 

All wars are deadly serious, and my thoughts are frequently with those directly caught up in the pain, terror, danger, destruction and loss that war carries in its DNA. And yet, with so many alternatives to military action available, I struggle to see this one as anything other than a series of reckless actions by an orange, puffed-up caricature of a world leader alongside others in positions of power, playing with the lives, lands, and futures of millions, both near and far. 

Many watching on seem baffled and possibly outraged by what has unfolded this month. But implications and consequences aside for a moment, the language of and justification for war itself feels curiously antiquated: transparently dishonest, illogical, unimaginative, emotionally illiterate, and astonishingly short-sighted.

Similarly, I find myself unable to listen to discussions in the House of Commons without a sense of embarrassment. The braying and booing, the scorning and jeering. You could hardly design a better architectural setting or system for pitching people against one another in a relentless ping-pong match of insults and counterarguments that defy meaningful action or resolution.  

While I am at it, I would add the excessive striving for power, control, territory, wealth, or ideological domination to my list of grievances ready to be banished to Room 101. It all feels so… yesterday.

In contrast, reading the brilliant blog by Marina Cantacuzino, founder of The Forgiveness Project, on Rethinking the Language of Contempt, listening to Professor Daisy Fancourt speak about her book Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform our Health, and studying the soul-orientated approach to seemingly unresolvable issues in systemic constellation work, restores my sense of faith that a better world is possible. 

What would really give me hope, however, is seeing the many effective, often evidence-based practices and initiatives that foster peace, health, care, connection and creativity properly funded, implemented, and woven into systems that are currently buckling under the weight of outdated thinking, much of it developed in the name of ‘progress’. 

As my wise constellations teacher said, what we may be witnessing is the “demise of competitive individualism”. Across the world, in both small and large ways, people are coming together in cooperatives, collaborations, conversations and communities, rather than conflicts. Many have recognised the dead end of elbowed egotism, excessive consumption, resource exploitation and disposable waste. Something else has been quietly brewing for decades. And though some of its early expressions may be flawed, it is happening. 

Here in this feisty little town in Gloucestershire that has always punched above its weight, the ground is tangibly rumbling. Not with tanks, but with a peaceful, bottom-up revolution. Changes in thinking, acting and being in this wonderful world based on what is beneficial to all. 

Bring it on. 

For just as valerian roots can quietly topple stone walls, so too can the gradual growth of grassroots initiatives gently tumble those clinging to the brittle pinnacles of old systems that have lost connection to their source.

The Point of February

angela findlay1 Comment

A lot goes on in February. 

The month opens with the ancient Gaelic festival of Imbolc, the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, marking the returning light and the first stirrings of spring. You could be forgiven for doubting it this year, with the interminable wet grey stretching across most of the winter. 

Mid-month in many parts of Europe and beyond is carnival season. In the Rhineland in Germany, Weiberfastnacht launches the week of street parties, parades and general craziness. Bands of women brandishing scissors storm town halls, ceremonially lopping off men’s ties in a symbolic reversal of power. Traditionally a kiss might be offered in exchange. I suspect there would be little appetite to bestow even a small peck upon the cheek of any of the unsavoury men currently filling the headlines whose ties many would gladly queue overnight to sever. 

Skipping over Valentine’s Day with its plethora of red rose themed flower bunches, heart-shaped chocolates and pink bubbly, on 17 February, the Chinese Zodiac ushered in the Year of the Fire Horse – a harbinger of intensity and fast-paced change on both personal and global levels. It sounds promising. And that day I genuinely felt the stable door to my long, conscious wintering fly open. I bolted like a horse with a rocket up its arse. This equine imagery swiftly morphed, however, into something closer to a headless chicken unsure in which direction to run. A rush of energy is not necessarily the same as orientation.

Then in the final week of the month, came rare sunshine. A morning walk in the woods. Warm breezes threaded with birdsong combed through bare branches quietly filling with sap. Forest floors rolled out green carpets in anticipation of white anemones, yellow celandine, and bluebells. For a moment, I felt the promise the daily news so persistently denies us. 

In stark contrast, I think of the extraordinary advances in AI, building a new world of technological brilliance and mechanised humanity. Social media claims to tailor connection, yet so often blurs our individual and cultural edges into a controllable global homogeneity. We may be more networked than ever, but also more divided.

Each generation pushes against the boundaries of its time: church, family, class, gender. Restriction is perceived as the enemy to individuality. But as boundaries dissolve, are we becoming freer or simply blending? Might we be witnessing not just liberation but a longing? A reemergence of desire for what is elemental, real and rooted? 

bronze leaves in cobbles marking the route Schiller and Goethe walked on 20. July 1794

My thoughts return to Goethe’s Metamorphosis and Urpflanze – the archetypal plant – concepts he shared in 1794 with Schiller during a short walk between the Town Hall and Schiller’s house in Jena. This conversation would mark the beginning of their lifelong friendship. In short, (very) short, he proposed that behind the myriad forms of plant life lies an archetype: an invisible set of laws that shape their variations. A rose does not rebel against its rose-ness. A beech tree does not experiment with becoming a birch. Even animals – aside from Jonathan Livingston Seagull – remain faithful to the parameters of their species.  

Some of Goethe’s flower specimens, Goethe Haus, Weimar

Humans, endowed with free choice, face a more complex task. We can wander far from ourselves and lose sight of any sense of an archetype.

How then do we like other living beings maintain a connection to our essence? 

Watching The Tony Blair Story on Channel 4 recently, I was struck by his unmistakable sense of destiny. The conviction of a task, sometimes arriving as a premonition. That certainty propelled him toward significant achievements. But also led to the – in my view – catastrophic misjudgement of the Iraq War. Ego, power, entitlement? We are daily reminded all too clearly where those things lead. 

Meanwhile, we are told that 12% of young people are NEETs – Not in Education, Employment or Training – drifting in a culture of instant stimulation but starved of meaning. How can they hear the quiet calling of vocation? How can they imagine let alone explore a destination with smartphones constantly robbing them of the fertile boredom and daydreaming out of which so many creative ideas once emerged?

The French artist Christian Boltanski once said: The best way to make work is to do nothing… and nothing… until you get so bored that you do something. 

He added: All we can do is wait and hope, hope that someday we’ll understand something, that someday we’ll understand who we are.

February, perhaps, is precisely this waiting. Dormancy, not death. Preparation. And then like racers off the starting block, commitment. 

I am now referring to those oft-quoted lines frequently attributed to Goethe – though written by William Hutchinson Murray in The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951)

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back… the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred… Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” 

February holds both truths at once: the necessity of waiting, and the call to begin.

Between Light and Darkness: From Jena’s Rebels to Buchenwald

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“I think you’ll like this,” a friend said unloading a hardback the size and weight of a breeze block. Slightly daunted and clueless about the rebels of its title, it sat atop the leaning tower of my bedside book pile. When I finally picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. 

Magnificent Rebels by Andrea Wulf transported me to the small university town of Jena (pronounced ‘Yain-a’) near Weimar, where, between 1795 and 1803, a group of brilliant minds coalesced and forever changed the world.

Known as the First Romantics, they were far more than the modern associations with sentimentality and solitary figures in idealised landscapes. This group of Germany’s brightest poets, philosophers and scientists – Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Novalis, the Schlegel and von Humboldt brothers, Schelling, and their wives – rebelled against the fragmented, rationalised worldview of the Enlightenment. Against the backdrop of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s armies, they revolutionised thinking, paving the way for modernity, the liberation of the Ich (Self), and the idea of free will.

Jena lay at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither Holy nor Roman but encompassed much of present-day Germany. Its university was governed by four Saxon rulers from different duchies, making rules difficult to enact and enforce. Escaping the censorship other universities faced, it became more progressive and open-minded than anywhere else. So while England, Spain and France turned outwards towards colonies and the United States, Germany remained inward-looking. With 40 universities (compared to England’s two) books were everywhere, fuelling imaginations and breaking new ground in people’s internal worlds. 

With the liberal-minded intellectual Caroline Michaelis-Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling (she married three times!) as the beating heart of the group, the Jena Set sought to poetise the increasingly mechanical world. They tore down boundaries between the arts, sciences, nature and the divine, weaving them together into a new reality. This recognition of the interconnectedness of all disciplines, with the Self and the arts as sense-makers of the world, ignited something in me, just as it had for many others both during their lifetimes and over the following two centuries. In our increasingly technicalised world, their conception of the world feels more relevant than ever. 

My excitement reading this book was so visceral that this January I travelled to Jena and Weimar to roam the streets they once inhabited. Like them, experiencing a place using all the senses is essential for me to understanding it. Jena didn’t disappoint, despite much of its architecture being destroyed during WWII and later by GDR urban policies. I could almost hear their excited chatter as they crossed the cobbled marketplace, made their way to the Schlegels’ salon, or wandered each other’s minds as they strolled the river in ‘Paradise’. This was Germany at its best – a land of poets and thinkers as well as composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Handel.

Three days later, I visited Buchenwald, a short bus ride from Goethe’s main home town of Weimar. The former concentration camp stood in stark contrast to the Jena I had just explored. Built in 1937, less than 20 years after architect Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar – a movement that, like the Jena Set, united disciplines, fusing art, craft and architecture into one of the most influential streams in modern design – it imprisoned Jews, political dissidents, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, religious leaders, Polish citizens, women, children, artists and writers… people labelled as wrong, inferior, of no worth.

The gates of Buchenwald bear the provocative words JEDEM DAS SEINE (‘To Each His Own’), furtively created in Bauhaus-style lettering by a defiant inmate. Once inside, the visitor instantly shrinks to a moving speck in the vast, seemingly empty arena of former suffering. I clocked the tapping of a distant woodpecker before being swallowed by the site’s app, which conjured visions of hell as I moved from freezing roll calls to the disinfection station, through over-crowded bunks, and into the crematorium ovens.

The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day on 27th January 2026 is ‘Bridging Generations.’ Like my VE Day talks last year – including one with Henry Montgomery (‘Monty’s’ grandson) at the National Army Museum, and more recently with James Holland and Al Murray on their popular WWII podcast We have Ways of Making You Talk – it’s a call to action. As contemporary witnesses die out, the responsibility for remembrance must pass to those who came after.

Yet, as a recent Times article highlighted, the number of schools marking the Holocaust has more than halved since the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7th October 2023. This is deeply concerning. It reveals a profound misunderstanding of what the Holocaust warns us about the present. Strip away categories and nationalities, and both perpetrators and victims were first and foremost ordinary people, like you and me.

Caroline Schlegel

The contrast between the intellectual vibrancy of Jena and the grim history of Buchenwald mirrors Germany’s descent from soaring heights to depraved depths.

While grieving the death of his beloved fiancée, the Jena Set poet Novalis discovered a new imagery of darkness. He likened his routine descents into the salt mines of Weißenfels to a journey through the wilderness of the self and the universe. He embraced the night as a place of transformation, knowing, as they all did, that light and dark are inseparable.

For me, regular descents into the darkness of prisons or into Germany’s Nazi past have become similar excavations of the human condition. Novalis found a higher existence in the darkness. I found smaller gems. The most important of them all: both the brightest light and the deepest darkness live within us.

Watch or listen to my episode ‘How to commemorate WW2’ on the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast

Peace on earth, goodwill to men… and women

angela findlay4 Comments

I am not a huge fan of Christmas, but I do love the peace of the days that follow the rush and stuffing of stockings, fridges and bellies. A stillness descends as exhausted people navigate the aftermath of families, toy-strewn floors and overflowing bins. Finally, those of us in the northern hemisphere can follow winter’s call to slow down, rest, and listen to the wisdom of our hearts and souls before the new year draws us back into action. 

Peace is not something we can take for granted anymore. Fighting – with words, ideologies or weapons – has increasingly become the norm. We have just been told by the UK defence minister, Al Carns, that “the shadow of war is knocking on Europe’s door.” And warned by NATO boss, Mark Rutte, that “we must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents and great grandparents endured.” In this year marking the 80th anniversaries of the end of the Second World War, I’ve been asking myself: how do we maintain peace in a world in which so many of the vows and institutions created to prevent future wars are under threat? How do we ensure that ‘Never Again’ still holds? Various recent events have been shaping my thoughts.

In early December, the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife, Elke Büdenbender, embarked on a three-day state visit to the UK, the first in 27 years. In his speech at the state banquet hosted by King Charles III and Queen Camilla, Steinmeier highlighted the deep connections between Britain and Germany; how traditions from each country have been woven together so tightly that their origins are now obscured. Not least among these is the Christmas tree. The first one was displayed in Windsor in 1800 by the German Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III, and the custom soon spread to living rooms across the UK. The same is true for Battenberg Cake – a story I love and have often told in my work (see my December 2017 blog). 

L-R: President Steinmeier, Dean of Coventry, Elke Büdenbender, Duke of Kent…

On the final day of his visit, President Steinmeier travelled to Coventry Cathedral. He and his wife were greeted by His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent who, among his other roles, is Patron of The Dresden Trust. Coventry and Dresden have been twinned since 1959, linked both by the devastation of the bombing raids each country inflicted on the other, and by the many decades of peace and reconciliation work that have followed.

Al Murray and James Holland

At around the same time, I had been sitting in one of Goalhanger’s recording studios. You may know them for some of their most popular podcasts in The Rest Is… series, including the chart-topping The Rest Is History and The Rest Is Politics. I was there with Henry Montgomery to talk with historian and broadcaster James Holland, and comedian and ‘Pub Landlord’ Al Murray, on their equally popular WW2-focused podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk.  Henry, also the grandchild of a high-ranking army officer – in his case the British field marshal best known as ‘Monty’ – and I had previously spoken together on VE Day at the National Army Museum. As I have mentioned in other blogs, we are exploring from our different perspectives how well Britain’s remembrance culture is really working. With ever fewer World War veterans and first-hand witnesses still alive to warn us of the horrors and futility of war, is it doing enough to keep “Never Again” a lived reality?

National Army Museum: Henry Montgomery, me and Daniel Cowling, May 2025

When I look at the visuals of Britain’s remembrance culture that make it into the media – for many people, perhaps the only occasions where they will actively ‘remember to remember’ the lessons of history – I fear we are not going far enough. We see mostly men in dark coats laying wreaths and solemnly reaffirming vows to uphold the peace and international friendship while elsewhere in the world other men stubbornly refuse to make it. We see the bright regalia of royalty and the glinting medals of veterans. It is the language of the military and the state: formal, symbolic and carefully choreographed. All fine and important. But peace is not confined to grand stages or organised occasions.

Listening to Radio 4’s brilliant Reith Lectures, this year titled Moral Revolution (what could be more pertinent in our times?) and delivered by the historian and author Rutger Bregman, I was struck by a description of a Quaker practice to bury the dead in unmarked graves. In stark contrast to the fields of Commonwealth War Graves and annual remembrance rituals, they believe you don’t honour people with costly headstones but with actions. Thomas Clarkson, the famous abolitionist who wrote extensively on the Quakers, said: If you wish to honour a good man, let all his actions live in your memory so that they may constantly awaken you to imitation, thus you will show that you really respect his memory.

In a similar vein, Germany’s counter memorial movement, which began in the 1980s, fundamentally changed the dynamics of memorialisation. Through its shifting, disappearing monuments and memorials to absence, the focus turned toward the millions murdered by the Nazis. Responsibility for remembrance and for ensuring such destruction never happens again was transferred from stone and bronze into the hands of ordinary people. 

And that is where it belongs. Peace is sustained not only by treaties, leaders and ceremonies, but by us – each and every one of us in our daily lives. 

So if, like Rutger Bregman with his call for a Moral Revolution, we were to start a Revolution of Peace, what might it look like? What would its optics be? What language would it speak and who would embody it? I suspect it would be a revolution that brings heart, warmth, listening, sharing and art into our everyday encounters. One with no emphasis on sides and differences, winners and losers, no interest in egos, power games or deception. Idealistic maybe, but arguably closer to what is naturally human for many of us than conflict and war. 

Perhaps over Christmas we can practice peacekeeping: at kitchen tables, in disagreements, in how we speak to one another and how willing we are to listen. In choosing curiosity and compassion over judgment. In noticing where hostility quietly creeps into our own lives and questioning the ingrained narratives that divide the world into a good and right ‘us’ and a bad and wrong ‘them’.  

When peace is on the line, remembrance must shift from an act of looking back to a commitment to shaping the future. Just as conflicts and wars escalate out of countless small decisions, so peace does too. May we – and the world’s leaders – choose peace in the year ahead.

But first, let the mayhem continue… Wishing you all a very happy festive season, a meaningful Winter Solstice, a restful and restorative break and, in 2026, peace on earth and goodwill to men… and women.

The We have Ways… podcast episode is due to be published on 30th December in all the usual podcast outlets.

Remembering, while watching falling leaves…

angela findlay6 Comments

I normally plant bulbs on Remembrance Sunday. But this year I’ve been ill. Instead I went for a gentle walk in nearby woods, silent but for the breeze combing its way through the upper branches.

Down below, all was still. Except for individual leaves falling like snow. Each one taking its moment to break from the twig to which it had been rooted since the spring and dance in a series of pirouettes, twirls and summersaults before landing quietly among the already fallen. Unseen except by a chance walker. 

Do they pick their moment, or are they plucked from life?

A certain readiness is a prerequisite for each leaf to fall. In summer, winds can howl through the branches and yet the leaves remain bound to the tree, weathering the storm, held in place by life forces that ebb and flow in synchrony with the seasons.

Death is natural for these fallen.

As I shuffle through the carpet of rust and gold, the rustle so reminiscent of childhood memories – kicking through the golden floors of beech forests in little rubber wellies – I can only ponder the dead. The war dead all around the world. The families they left behind. The scars of loss, grief, trauma and silence that remain in their wake, often hidden for generations, shaping the souls of those who come after.

We call them the fallen. It softens the reality of how they died. But while we remember them with warm hearts and deep gratitude, let us – with all the advantages of hindsight – not forget the utter horror, violence and futility of war.

As countries around the world build their armies and arsenal, let us refrain from falling into the trap of thinking war can ever be a solution to political, religious, geographical or economic problems.

Let us remember that the cost is always too high.

When big isn’t necessarily better

angela findlay4 Comments

Reflections on: IN PROCESS… a life, a film, a book, an exhibition, The Vaults, Stroud. Sunday 19th October, 11am-5pm and by appointment until 1st November.

 

“We must, we must, we must increase the bust.

The bigger the better, the tighter the sweater, the boys depend on us.”

I remember chanting that with my boarding school roommates as a teenager, elbows flung back in a futile attempt – in my case at least – to inflate our adolescent chests. Bigger was definitely better, or so we believed.

Burj Khalifa, Dubai

Skyscrapers, cars, salaries, houses… In so many areas of modern society, ‘big’ still equals ‘better.’ More followers, more likes, more headlines, more sales. The biggest countries led by the most powerful leaders and largest militaries make the most noise. And yet we know, quantity doesn’t equate to quality. Magnitude doesn’t always reflect meaning or value.

This idea – that bigger isn’t always better – is something I’ve seen reflected both in the trajectory of my great great aunt Joan’s life and in my own development as an artist. (If you are new to Joan’s story, please see my previous blogs for background.)

Patshull Hall, Staffordshire

Joan’s tent

Joan grew up in a 147-room stately home in Staffordshire. Yet she spent her final weeks in a single, often soggy Meade tent pitched in a remote Himalayan Valley, surrounded not by grandeur but by shepherds, wildflowers and the sound of rain. She had traded scale for purpose. And her joy, it seems, had grown as her material load had lessened.

My own artistic journey has followed a similarly inverse curve.

Painting a mural in Sydney, 1987

I began large, unable to contain any drawing or painting within the boundaries of paper or canvas. My work spilled onto walls, first private then public, then grew further to fill stage backdrops for theatres or touring bands. Various mishaps including a paint-splattered boss’s car and a disastrous commission to paint the backdrop for INXS KICK album tour in 1987, which promptly cracked and fell off in large chunks when rolled up, nudged me toward the more forgiving surface of prison walls. There, no amount of damage could make the environment worse than it already was.

The light danced, 120x120cm

Years later, I turned my focus to canvases of my own, their size dictated by the available studio space and commercial considerations of galleries. And most recently, to works just 28x28cm – or smaller. I have replaced the vast audiences of art fairs with the quiet intimacy of just six or seven visitors at a time into the two vaults beneath my home in Stroud’s Cemetery.

The Vaults

Those vaults now house In Process… a deeply personal exhibition about Joan, her life and the resonance her death still holds for me, our family and small communities she encountered in India.

In one vault, where gravediggers once hung their tools and I now hang mine, visitors watch a short film projected into the open lid of an old trunk telling the story of Joan Margaret Legge.

In the other, where those same workers drank tea, ghostly white plaster casts hang like three-dimensional botanical drawings reminiscent of the specimens Joan collected and sent to Kew Gardens.

‘138 days’

A series of square sketchbooks chart the 138 days I followed Joan’s 1939 diary entries. Starting on 17th February when I stepped into her shoes as she boarded a ship to India, I step out of them again on 4th July, the day she slipped off the edge of a Himalayan path to her death. One photograph, one sketchbook page, each day a quiet re-embodiment across time. Not a recreation of her journey, but a chance to listen more deeply to the changing tone of her voice in the final months of her life.

At the heart of the exhibition is its smallest piece: a re-working of a first edition of Frank Smythe’s Valley of Flowers, the very book that inspired Joan’s expedition. Through collage, drawings and pressed flowers, it now tells the stories of three visitors to the valley rather than just one: his, hers and mine. Wrapped in brown paper and tied with string like an archival package, the book invites visitors to wear white gloves to turn its delicate pages, not because it is precious in a monetary sense, but out of respect, Unlike most artworks, these ones are meant to be handled and engaged with.

‘Three journeys in one’

There is nothing for sale. No press campaign. No sponsorship. Just a quiet space, tucked away in a garden, found by invitation or chance. A strange but deliberate choice, and to me, a more authentic reflection of the humbleness of where Joan’s life ended than any traditional gallery could offer.

What Joan lost in material possessions, she gained in purpose and joy. Her life distilled into what nine porters could carry. She found a sense of completeness long before she had completed her journey.

That’s what I hope to convey in the improvised, immersive pieces shown in the warm belly of my limestone vaults. People forgive imperfection and lack of polish as they connect with Joan’s story through their hands, senses and bodies.

Just as artists learn to see not just form but negative space – the shapes between things – so Joan’s outwardly abundant life transformed into an inner world: slower, quieter, less visible, but not lesser in any way.

Maybe this is a natural outcome of ageing… the gentle decluttering of ambition and a reshuffling of values. Or maybe Joan’s story is a simple reminder that richness cannot always be seen and meaning doesn’t always require an audience.

The symmetry in our shrinking trajectories is just an observation.

But it feels strangely right.

IN PROCESS…

Sunday 19th October, 11am-5pm and by appointment until 1st November.

The Vaults, 114 Bisley Road, Stroud

 

 

 

Creativity in times of destruction…

angela findlay8 Comments

“It’s brutal.”

That’s how a friend recently described being an artist. He had been a student at Goldsmiths in the late eighties and early nineties, during the rise of the Young British Artists (YBAs) like Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin and Sarah Lucas, names that would go on to dominate the art world, thanks in part to the patronage of Charles Saatchi.

We ran into each other at the local paint shop—a regular stop for him in his current life as a decorator. Across a spread of tester pots and fillers, the conversation effortlessly turned to the day-to-day grind of being an artist. Over the summer I have been preparing for my forthcoming exhibition, In Process… (which opens today, 27th September!) and was feeling the impact of long, solitary studio days, wrestling with questions only I was posing and whose answers seemed only to matter to me. It can be a struggle: adhering to a discipline of showing up as captain to a ship with no passengers, steering a course to a nebulous destination, deep-diving into the depths of the soul, mind or body – wherever the well of creativity bubbles up – to haul tiny gems to the surface. Exhaustion and self-doubt often creep in.

‘What’s the point?’ is the main saboteur. The work seems irrelevant, the purpose elusive. There’s no financial gain, just costs. In the isolation of the studio, there’s no one to argue with those thoughts. Indeed it is easy to agree with them: Why bother?

And in times of widespread destruction – whether global or even personal – that sense of futility can grow.

This summer, for example, parts of my home were stripped back to their foundations. My life was overtaken by builders, noise, dusty cups of coffee and chaos. Creativity felt all but impossible. In the grand scheme of things, this was a minor inconvenience. Soon, things would return to normal. But what about those whose lives have been shattered by larger forces… wars, displacement, destruction and poverty on a massive scale? How does creativity find its place amidst the rubble of Gaza, Ukraine, or other war-torn regions? Or even amongst the devastating images that make their way into our minds?

History has shown that creativity can thrive in the moments when everything appears to be falling apart. Creative expression becomes a form of resilience, opposition, even survival. It can be a small act of regaining control in an otherwise uncontrollable situation; a conduit for grief, an out-breath for trauma, a balm for moral wounds. Marks on walls or scraps of paper cry out: I am still here.

In today’s news-filled world where conflicts and politics pitch people against each other while social media distracts and distorts, I feel the call to act. To do or say something that will make a difference. I contemplate taking to the streets and marching in protest. Or superglueing myself to a pavement. I wonder if ‘speaking out’ involves publishing endless blogs and posts on social media denouncing what (I feel) is wrong? Ineffectuality wears one down. 

But to me, the direction of the human race is a force majeure, too big for even the Trump to halt. We find ourselves swept in its rampageous current, both unwilling cogs in the destruction of things we once valued, and parts of an optimistic surge to re-build better. I feel feeble and impotent. When I can’t even open the lid on a jar of gherkins, how can I shift anything of significance? But maybe this disorientating maelstrom is precisely the context in which creativity becomes most vital. Maybe the internal orientation creativity demands provides a space for the mind to process, to breathe, to make light of the weight and sense of the senseless, and to find fragments of meaning in what frequently seems like an overwhelming mess.

Destruction can’t defeat creativity; it calls it forth, demanding that we seek beauty, purpose and points of connection. That process can feel ‘brutal’.  What’s the point? is never far away. But I try to remember: The point is not always to create something monumental. Nor is it to offer neat answers. Sometimes, the point is simply to make something that wasn’t there before, to keep moving forward and to hold onto the belief that every act of creation – however small and seemingly insignificant – is a counter movement, an act of defiance, a stand against that which threatens to destroy us. 

In Process… at The Vaults in Stroud

I have heaved my most recent exhibition out of a time of dark chaos. But as I – and it – clawed our way to the surface, it grew its own wings. Help came from unexpected places. Beauty emerged. And now it is there, in the Vaults, among the grapes on my vine, fruits to share.

There was a point!

You are so welcome to visit.

IN PROCESS…

In Process… Opening Times:  

  • Saturday & Sunday 27th/28th September, 11am-4pm
  • Monday 29th September – Friday 3rd October, 2-5pm
  • Saturday & Sunday 4th/5th October, 11am-5pm
  • Sunday 19th October 11am-5pm
  • And by appointment at other times throughout October (excluding 10th–17th and 22nd–26th October)

If you would like more context to the work in the exhibition prior to coming, please read my previous three blogs: Following Joan… Parts One, Two & Three.