In 1967, a young Ethiopian woman who was studying in England gave birth to a baby. Not long after, she returned to her native country alone.  Lemn Sissay – renamed Norman by his assigned social worker – was placed with a white, Baptist couple in Ashton-in-Makerfield. His birth mother would not sign any adoption papers. My Name is Why (2019) charts Sissay’s passage through the care system in Wigan via a combination of his own recollections and reports from the Authority, only recently made available to him after a 34-year campaign. It is a harrowing insight into the early life of a man ma ..read more

It was as if I had lost some special capacity to filter my own perceptions, one that I had only become aware of once it was no longer there … I was beginning to see my own fears and desires manifested outside myself, was beginning to see in other people’s lives a commentary on my own. Following a divorce, Faye turns inward and becomes absent from her exterior life – it hurts less than being present. An English writer, her narrative picks up as she embarks on a journey to Greece, where she will teach a short writing course. Along the way, she encounters many others with stories to tell – stor ..read more

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s fantasy novel The Buried Giant, a great mist erases the collective memory, leaving the story’s characters “unable to access the past and with it to move forward into the future” [1]. The idea of collective forgetting is almost impossible to imagine in our own world, with the unfathomable amount of information available on the web. And yet to bastardise a Cecil Null line, humans have forgotten more than the web will ever know. Reflecting on this is no bad thing; doing something about it is even better. In the Google-age, knowledge is increasingly privatised, and unfortunate ..read more

“Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions.”It is 1945 and the end of war is in sight. Britain’s young people are having to refocus their aims for a world no longer at war. For the girls at The May of Teck Club (an establishment "for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years" in Kensington, London), the end of war will effect no significance change: they will go on, each seeking their own personal goals, be they a job in publishing, an inch off one’s waste, or – most popular a goal – a nice ..read more

“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.” Everyone has at least one story to tell: the story of their first love. This is Paul Casey’s. At the green age of nineteen, Paul finds himself at a loose end during a summer break from university. Back at his parents in a leafy Surrey suburb, he decides to join the local tennis club for a little distraction. Boy does he get it. Stumbling into a mixed doubles pairing with a Susan Macleod, there are more hormones than tennis balls flying about on court ..read more

Ann Morgan is a writer and editor based in London. Her writing has been published in the Guardian, Literary Review, and BBC Music Magazine. She is author of three books and has given a TED Talk on the year she spent reading a book from every country on Earth. Her latest novel, Crossing Over, is an Audible exclusive and details the unexpected coming together of a migrant from Malawi and an ageing British woman with dementia. You can read my review here: Crossing Over by Ann Morgan In Crossing Over, we have two big issues at play: dementia and illegal immigration. What interested you about t ..read more

For many, crossing a border barely registers as an experience; for others, it can be a matter of life and death. Jonah falls into the latter category. A young man from Malawi who is driven from his homeland by a savage famine, Jonah comes to England on the promise of a better life. But before he has set foot on British soil, the rest of his party have lost their deadly gamble and he is left alone to finish his journey. For many, one’s memories are the bedrock of identity; for others, they are a troubling puzzle to be solved. Edie falls into the latter category. Frustrated by all that lies b ..read more

“People could, in fact, be used up -- could use each other up, could be of no further help to each other”Macon and Sarah Leary are failing. After years of marriage, the death of their son in a hold-up a year back has given them each a fresh view on the world. A fresh view on each other. Macon enjoys himself in moderation: routine and stability give him a way to negotiate life. Sarah (outwardly) feels more. Sarah also wants a divorce. Nothing typifies Macon Leary better than his job. Macon writes guidebooks for businessmen who have to travel but prefer not to. His series (entitled The Accide ..read more

In a city of proclamations and whispers, being interesting is taking a risk. Walking the streets with your head always in a nineteenth century book is viewed as reckless then. And yet, that is what middle sister does. At eighteen years old, she is not enacting a small rebellion, she is simply doing as pleases her. Aside from flagrant reading of Dostoevsky and Dickens, middle sister is a normal teenager: she sees her partly-secret maybe-boyfriend several times a week, bats off questions of marriage from her mother who knows nothing of her love life, and helps take care of little sisters with h ..read more

In 2015-2016, junior doctors were entrenched in a war of words with the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, leading to an unprecedented series of strikes. It is not unusual for NHS workers to decry the performance of the Health Secretary but it is rare to see the Government – followed by some of the media – push back as hard. Step up Adam Kay. A former doctor, Kay had been recounting his experiences of the NHS (based on his personal diaries) for laughs at the Edinburgh Fringe as part of his new career as a comedian, when, seeing the pasting former colleagues were taking in the press, he decided to ..read more