Spiritual reflections on dogs can teach us lessons that just might save our lives. Thank God for dogs who remind us to be happy in the moment, for dogs who play with sticks and tennis balls and let them lie when they've had enough. Thank God for dogs who get us out and about, who remind us that it's not 'all about me' or even all about humans. Thank God for dogs who teach us about injury and pardon. Thank God for the bonds of love that endure. God help all creatures who do not feel safe or...

Sexual politics gets very personal as radical second wave feminists raise fears about persons with penises in female public toilets; midwives are instructed that the word 'mother' is discriminatory to pregnant trans men; and transactivists relate their experience of exclusion from female space and feminist solidarity. Queer theory has led to the umbrella term 'transgender' being used for transsexual and transvestite people alike, and sometimes also to genderqueer or non-binary people who a...

"Dreaming Anarchy" describes my fieldwork and theoretical reflection in the autumn of 2001 on a back-to-nature community occupying a Pyrenean village in Spanish Territory. The self-conscious methodology I adopted was to record and analyse my own dreams while in the community, using "The Interpretation of Dreams" as a toolbox. I hoped to observe not only the transition from English (and Scots) to Spanish (and Basque) but also the Gestalt of resistance and attraction to my self-definition as...

What is a doctor of philosophy, whose thesis on education-as-alchemy focuses on the metaphysics of Quality, doing writing about food? Why am I interested in what, when and how people eat and what are my qualifications for writing a book about body-logic? Why, in other words, should you read this book? These are all valid questions, especially for all of you who sigh while standing on the scales – as new diet after new diet makes no difference.Metaphysics is just another word for th...

From the no-man's-land of the continuing conflict over abortion, "Life Choice" listens to women and makes a plea for women on differing sides to respect the integrity of the motivation of their sisters - even when they totally disagree - and suggests that questioning the automatic link between legality and morality may enable women to listen to each other. The author finds the framing of this conflict as a debate unhelpful and provides an alternative view, of the ambiguity inherent in trag...

A summer holiday week with friends and family in an old stone cottage in pretty Pencarden village, in the lovely woodland grounds of the Police College where Bruno is teaching a course in emotional reception as an aspect of situational awareness. Bruno gets lost in the pathways that wind among the Scots pine, horse chestnut, larch, beech, oak, sycamore, yew and elms and is drawn to the estuary with its mudflats, and the haunting cries of curlews. A faded photograph of a Late Victorian lady...

In what should be the happiest time of his life – teaching at a good school, with great friends, a lovely lover and a child to raise jointly on the way – Bruno Benedetti stands weeping on a bridge over the motorway that passes through Glasgow's Charing Cross. Under the midnight rain, poised between truth and lies, Bruno is overwhelmed by the fear that the person he was most sure of has been deceiving him for years. This despair drowns out his persistent sense that something is deeply wrong...

The mysterious silvered words of prophecy on a tapestry of Irish linen just seem part of the Hebridean island charm of Tìr nam Bàn, where Bruno and his friends are taking kids on a school trip for a week's retreat in a rebuilt Old Catholic Nunnery. Despite the uptight Abbess, and Justin's fear of nuns, students and teachers are having a lovely time on what seems to be a simple island paradise. Entranced by the Aurora Borealis, by the beauty of the island, and more in love than ever with hi...

After Bruno suffers a long-expected family bereavement, Justin and Imogen get him a fun present: a mystery weekend at Corpington Manor at Old Yule. All's fun (although very weird) until they lose a night, are imprisoned in a freezing cellar and escape back home where Clara tells them to get some therapy for their PTSD. Their Scooby-Doo type adventure stops being comic when relationships break down and Bruno is sacked from his job – for actions which he can't remember doing. Hiking the West...

Bruno's father has dementia and neither the unusually hot Scottish summer nor even Justin's habitual strip-teasing can take his mind off the slow ebbtide of Alzheimer's. Justin's suggestion of going to a Psychic Fayre leads to Bruno overhearing a tarot card reading, with cards on the table also for him, then meeting the questioner, Bernadette – who isn't just the pretty, dumpy, intelligent and deeply lonely nurse she seems. When Imogen and Clara move out for the summer, a new tenant destab...

Bruno finally turns forty and proposes to his friends that they open a small school. Unbeknownst to Bruno, Clara has inherited a property with some money and her organisational skills make this unlikely project possible. Justin and Imogen and other friends are persuaded to join the new venture. But not Simone, who asks Bruno if he ever hears noises in the school. Sad noises. All are busy in preparation until things go bump in the night and Johnny barely escapes with his life. Tensions rise...

From 18611865, the Great American Civil War raged. It is generally taught as though it were a well-scripted movie with a definitive beginning and end. Images and stories from the horribly littered Gettysburg battlefield to the Appomattox surrender from General Lee to General Grant have all the trappings of a powerfully executed drama, and with the coda of Lincolns assassination, the story could not be more complete. But while the massive engagements on the innumerable fields of battle were...