On 8 December 2025, Lai Chee-ying, also known as Jimmy Lai, spent his seventy-eighth birthday in solitary confinement, a guest of the People’s Republic of China. At the age of twelve, Lai entered Hong Kong as a stowaway from Canton. There, he had once been the scion...

Sir Anthony Hopkins, an actor from Port Talbot, Wales—a town boasting a population of just 31,550—has been honoured with two Academy Awards, four BAFTAs, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, the BAFTA Fellowship for Lifetime...

I have two favourite films. Yesterday, I took the afternoon off to watch Casablanca. It is December 1941. The Germans have overrun Europe. Refugees flood Casablanca, desperate to obtain passes for neutral Portugal, and from there to America. Casablanca is under the...

“Rapa, poom, poom, poom.” “Rapa, poom, poom, poom.” We can hear the sousaphones pumping from ten blocks away, off Frederick Street, Nassau. It’s Junkanoo time in The Bahamas. “Hurry up, kids — and Laura. We’ll be late.” The taxi drops the four of us at the corner of...

When my kids were kids, our favourite time of day was reading to them at bedtime. Coming from England, I inundated them with The Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and The Happy Prince. As they grew older, we turned to Harry Potter....

My mum—“She Who Must Be Obeyed”—divorced when I was five and took me with her to England. My dad remained in Tanzania, working for East African Airways. Every school break, Dad sent me free tickets home. But for my seventeenth birthday, he outdid himself:...

Fat Charlie, the Archangel, sloped into the room. “Have I got good news for you! A job that’ll pay you five thousand dollars a month.” To his associates, Charlie was regarded more as a grey angel — if not a black one. Imagine a super-sized Father Christmas: white hair...

Last Monday, I went to get a haircut. Beside me sat a little boy perched on a wooden plank bridging the arms of the barber’s chair. It was his first haircut. How did I know? Because his parents were flitting round and round him, taking photos from every angle. I...

My favourite dates come from Sukkari, and they were running out. Time to buy some more.Off-season in Calgary — that is, after Ramadan — you can only purchase them from Basha International Supermarket in the northeast, the bastion of our Asian and Middle Eastern...

At one time, Calgary, Canada, boasted the largest Scrabble club in North America. It was all due to Siri, who started it with a group of six British ex-pats like me. Siri became an evangelist for the game. “We’ll turn our membership into a hundred within the year,” he...