My father died on 1 April 2012. Being an Ismaili Muslim, the community took charge of the entire ceremony at no cost. Discovering that my wife was Filipina, they kindly gave her a "cheat sheet" to memorise all the responses in Arabic for the funeral. What the burial...

As a veteran accountant, devoted to a lifetime of combatting errant tax returns, my sincere advice to you is NEVER spend Christmas in South Beach (SoBe to the initiated), Miami, Florida. It was all a ploy to steer The Monster, my younger son, away from the back...

In an era when war was romanticized, Wilfred Owen, an Englishman and First World War soldier, became the greatest of poets by denouncing that lie. Owen described the horror he witnessed: “If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace behind the wagon we flung him...

Here in Canada, the Land of Oz, we are told that our law-enforcement squads will not pursue a vehicle if doing so could endanger the life of the driver or that of the wider community. Its number plate is recorded. The car is followed at a discreet distance until the...

Each evening at 8 p.m., I deposit my mobile phone in the freezer and retire to bed. For the next hour, I read at least one chapter from each of five books. How do I choose them? Something that teaches me. Something that amuses me. Pulp fiction I can race through....

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....