The Allies enter Paris, July 1815  It was just before four, as a new day and a new era dawned,  that Leo awoke. In the feeble candlelight, the unfamiliar room slowly impinged upon him. Incomprehension was displaced by a hazy remembrance. With the ghost of a smile, he uttered Roisin’s name.     “My dear love,” she said. “Welcome back to ...

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               El Springador (belatedly) chews on the theme of chance, not without a whiff of scentiment.Say 'Lucky' to me and I think of that woolly pooch who used to star in the More Than Insurance adverts. He had a nose for hot water, a regular rappaw with disaster, but always ended up saving his bacon by the skin of his ...

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                Sir James Mansfield was no conventional lawyer drawing a clientèle from the aristocracy and the flower of the professions. In his sixty-fifth year, he had served two terms as Solicitor General for the Crown and was on his way to becoming Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, the capacity in which John ...

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          Window in St Peter's Basilica, Rome   A poem for the Feast of Pentecost And then it happened... We hung around for safety above ground level the clamouring souls outside a packed embolus fain clutching our feet as if they craved live contact with celebrity and sought a fragment of him we could not furnish that ...

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          I've liked a lot of popular songs over the years. But the best ones are those I've learnt to sing, either with an ensemble or solo. The sheer high of the shared occasion, the pressure of performance which often unpacks a deeper meaning, have loaded them with a golden significance. It's impossible to choose a favourite. But the following poem ...

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        A poem for the Feast of the Ascension He spoke of leaving,scripture as being fulfilledDid we sense the change?He'd proved a Resurrectionthat was his, not ours Every filament was radiant with new life,something had happened,nothing was as it had been,the Rubicon crossedHis transparent eyebeheld another country,Jerus'lem conquered,but the Romans ...

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