Author Archives: bernardporter2013

It’s now just under 36 hours before we cease to be part of the EU (apart from all those pesky loose ends to tie up).  I’ll be marking it tomorrow night, together with 60+ other British exiles and their Swedish … Continue reading →

Cold and dark but cosy and an ideal environment for writing. This is our ‘sommarhus’ in the Stockholm archipelago, now serving as a ‘vinterhus’. I’ve just finished a chapter that was giving me huge problems. After a terrible night last … Continue reading →

If Boris Johnson is thinking of moving the House of Lords to the North – partly to get it out of his hair, and partly to suck up to the region of England most decimated by Thatcherism – York is … Continue reading →

A week or so ago the Daily Mail devoted 17 (seventeen) pages to Harry and Megan, and their decision to leave ‘The Firm’, as the Royal Family calls itself, and settle in Toronto. I take little interest in our royal goings-on, … Continue reading →

At a dinner party we gave last night for some of our fondest Swedish friends the conversation turned to our family backgrounds. All were Swedes, mostly Swedish-born, apart from me (now a demi-Swede); one of Indian origin; another from Sierra … Continue reading →

The two stand-out social factors accounting for the divisions between ‘Brexiters’ and ‘Remainers’ are (a) age, and (b) education. This has been demonstrated over and over again statistically. In short: the older you were, and the less educated, the more … Continue reading →

I’ve only just discovered ‘Flash Mob’. This piece had me in tears. The spirit of the Europe we’ve rejected? It’s the faces of the onlookers and the children I was particularly moved by. Who says classical music is ‘elitist’? If … Continue reading →

A very busy and productive post-Christmas break had me completing two books. Well, not really. The first was a new final chapter for the 6thedition of The Lion’s Share, entitled ‘Brexit and the Empire’; the second a Preface and a … Continue reading →

I have no specialist knowledge or original ideas about the bush/forest fires raging now in eastern Australia, and so will refrain from commenting on them here. I know the area well, having lived for longish periods in Canberra and Sydney. … Continue reading →

It looks like something out of Dominic Cummings’s playbook; though it’s a pretty obvious idea, and is probably in The Prince too. Get all your most outrageous actions in at the very beginning of your reign, so that they’ll be less … Continue reading →