Category: Peace

Could the question to start 2019 be: What can we, Great Britain, put in? rather than: What can we get out?

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I’d like to focus my last blog of 2018 on a single question that arose out of a letter written by a German citizen and published in The Guardian. It is addressed to all of us here in Britain and I feel it captures the essence of the principles we celebrate and/or practice in some form or other over the Christmas period: family and giving.

It says: “Dear friends in Britain. Maybe you are not aware of what Europe will miss when you leave. We will miss your refreshing views, because living on the continent can give a blinkered viewpoint. We will miss your international experience and networks. We will miss your calmness and pragmatism. We will miss your long democratic experience in developing the future EU. Together we are strong! Please stay. We are waiting for you with open arms.”

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Blessings in the Accursed Mountains

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I am just back from hiking in Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro. “Why there??” people asked me, instinctively conjuring up images of gangsters, blood feuds, genocide and war. Two articles about the Accursed Mountains and the Peaks of the Balkans trail had captured my imagination and ten days of trekking through some of the most remote landscapes left in Europe proved my instinct to be right.

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War… what is it good for? (Absolutely nothing?)

angela findlay1 Comment

Over the past 4 weeks, I have been listening to this year’s Reith Lectures “The Mark of Cain” by historian Professor Margaret MacMillan. They are all about war and they are brilliant. Personally, as someone who is equally comfortable / uncomfortable with creativity and destructivity, I find the questions she is exploring absolutely fundamental to what it is to be human.

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