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| Reg Windett obituary Former wartime RAF pilot, he worked for the MoD helping to create the first radio approach system for planesThe great throng at the funeral of my friend Reg Windett, who has died aged 88, testified to an exceptionally well-lived life.He was born in Finchley, north London, the only son of Bert and Connie Windett. After leaving Haberdashers' Aske's school, he joined the RAF and flew Wellingtons for Coastal Command in the Mediterranean, surviving three crashes and nearly falling through a door which "some fool had left open". After the war, he worked for the Ministry of Defence, helping to create the first radio approach system, which was adopted by all top airlines and is still a back-up for satellite navigation.Reg was a keen walker and birdwatcher, a very good club cricketer, playing well into his 50s, a county badminton player and a scratch golfer. In 1996 he and Betty, whom he had married in 1951, came to live in Cedars retirement village near Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, where they became well-loved residents. They were also among the liveliest, but recently they both suffered severe disabilities, which they faced with cheerful fortitude.They got on with life as best they could. Reg played golf until, or even after, he could no longer see the ball at his feet. Blind and arthritic, he conducted a keep-fit session weeks before his death. He had always been a lover of words and books, and the greatest pride of his old age was in the thriving poetry group he formed in 1996.He was a prolific poet. His verses might not have always scanned perfectly but they were full of quirky humour and imaginative observation. Some were just fun – like his last, provoked by finding a marmalade jar on Mount Ararat – but others had a serious point, adroitly made. His incisive judgments also enlivened our book group, and one of his final acts was to award 10 out of 10 to Animal Farm, instead of his more usual two-and-a-half.Reg was a true original: brave, humane, clever, a clear-eyed optimist, a devoted husband and a friend to many. It was typical that on his deathbed, he worried about whether his doctor had had lunch. He is survived by Betty, their son Michael, three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.AeronauticsAir transportPoetryGolfguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Books of The Times: Will the Dragon Swat Down the Eagle? Martin Jacques argues that China’s rapid growth and sheer size will make it the dominant political and cultural superpower, not just an economic contender. feeds.nytimes.com |
Ten of the best child narrators Down With Skool! by Geoffrey Willans The four Molesworth books, of which this is the first, are narrated by Nigel Molesworth and were banned in my school, ostensibly because of their wonderfully bad spelling. Utterly subversive, they imagine the world of the English prep school (St Custard's) through the eyes of this cynical, self-interested, irreverent, skiving pupil. Education is a farce, "as any fule kno".Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle Doyle's eponymous narrator is a 10-year-old living on a Dublin housing estate. He discusses all that matters to him: his games, his friendships, his fights. Violence is reported with cold-eyed curiosity. Meanwhile the story of his parents' fragmenting marriage seeps through almost despite his best efforts to pretend that things are fine.Songs of Innocence by William Blake Blake's simple yet unsettling rhymes are full of children, but many are also spoken by children. A protest against slavery becomes the song of "The Little Black Boy", announcing that "my soul is white". "The Chimney Sweeper" is told by a young boy "sold" into the trade by his father. In the most innocent of all, "Infant Joy", Blake gives us a lyric in the voice of a two-day-old child.Now We Are Six by AA Milne In this 20th-century Songs of Innocence, many of the verse anecdotes are put in the mouths of children. "Binker – what I call him – is a secret of my own, / And Binker is the reason why I never feel alone." The template for any number of "innocent" tales for children.The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon Haddon's protagonist, Christopher, is 15, but (though this is unstated) has Asperger's syndrome and finds the emotions of other characters almost unintelligible. The story is narrated in his own flat, factual way, letting us glimpse what he cannot comprehend.Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer The main strand of Foer's post-9/11 novel is narrated by nine-year-old Oskar, whose father has been killed in one of the twin towers. He makes fart jokes and explains his fears and obsessions (public transportation, Hiroshima, wearing white clothes). He is also a prodigious polymath. Grief, we surmise, is to be percolated to the reader through his avoidance of the topic.Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Finn is 13 and a brilliantly imagined mixture of wiliness and innocence. On the run from his drunken father and the stern Widow Douglas ("she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me"), he travels down the Mississippi with escaped slave Jim, encountering various feuding or thieving adults along the way. The story is told in his own colloquial manner.Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson The best of all pirate adventures is narrated by Jim Hawkins, who sails as a cabin boy on the Hispaniola. His trust has been won by the ship's cook, Long John Silver, but Jim hides in an apple barrel and overhears him plotting the murder of the rest of the crew. Thanks to Jim, the goodies triumph.Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud The narrator of this autobiographical novel, about a child's journey to Morocco with her sister and her hippy mother, is of an uncertain age. She has her fifth birthday during the novel, but her vocabulary includes "entourage" and "stringently". However, the pleasure here is in inferring the motivations (mysterious to her) of the adults.The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson "I'm Tracy Beaker. This is a book all about me. I'd read it if I were you." In the first of the Tracy Beaker books, our 10-year-old heroine is living in a children's home. She tells her story, daydreaming of the mother who will rescue her and imagining that she will one day be a great writer. Which she is.Children and teenagersRoddy DoyleWilliam BlakeMark HaddonMark TwainJacqueline WilsonJohn Mullanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Face to faith: A religion that is based on a code of moral injunctions should be approached warily, says David Bryant A religion that is based on a code of moral injunctions should be approached warily'Do you think I should have an abortion, Vicar?" The woman huddled in my study armchair was distressed and embarrassed. Her partner had shot himself three days before owing to massive debts.We went through all the arguments for seeking a termination. The child would be fatherless. There was no family in the wings to give support. She had a career to follow and a mound of bills. Motherhood would mean homelessness and penury. On top of that it seemed unfair to bring a child into the world whose father had taken his own life.There were counter-indications. Many surgeons are reluctant to perform abortions on healthy foetuses. It might mean an expensive private clinic which she could ill afford. Then there were her friends to consider. People can become decidedly sniffy when it comes to terminations. Talk of abortion raises uneasiness at best and downright hostility at worst. The crux of the matter was guilt. My time as a hospital chaplain had shown me that the legacy of destroying a foetus could be long-standing regret or depression and self-harm.The ball came back into my court. "Well, what do you advise?" It was an unacceptable question, a passing of the moral buck. She wanted to offload the gruelling burden of choice on to me. That way she could not lose out. If I rejected abortion outright as immoral and godless she could blame me rather than herself for any detrimental future outcome. If I backed the abortion proposal her conscience was off the hook: "I did it with the church's approval," she could say.Where religion is concerned it is vital to maintain freedom of choice. A faith that is based on a set of prohibitions or a code of moral injunctions should be approached warily. The shouldering of ethical decisions is our personal responsibility. It must not be farmed out. So also, a religion that requires its members to subscribe to a set of creedal assertions needs careful scrutiny. In adhering to it unthinkingly we delegate the right to choose what we believe and how we should behave.A fundamentalist approach to scripture can also be a cop-out. If the book of Leviticus states that homosexuality is an abomination there is no need to engage in an inward dialogue of moral reasoning. There it is in black and white. If church tradition tells against the ordination of women to the priesthood there is no more to be said – great, my forebears have worked it all out for me.There is formidable pressure put on us to relinquish our freedom of thought. The popular press frequently presents us with a fait accompli. A criminal is branded an animal, a member of parliament an unscrupulous cheat, and we accept the judgment without knowing the circumstances in full. It is a dangerous process.One of the blessings of our humanity is that we have a conscience. To opt out of using such a priceless gift is irresponsible. Of course there are immense dangers here. We may make ill-guided decisions. Our thinking may be warped and skewed. On occasion we will follow a course of action so crass or unsociable that it brings us up before the magistrate. But if we allow the church, the nanny state, the media or popular opinion to become our conscience, we lose our moral integrity.I had no easy answers for the woman. All I could offer was compassion in her grief and sympathy for the agony of choice that lay ahead. We fixed a meeting for the following day, but I never saw her again. True, I had been non-directive, but I could be none other. "I am responsible for my very desire of fleeing responsibilities," said Jean-Paul Sartre. I believe he was right. That is why I could not decide the fate of the foetus for her.ReligionPhilosophyJean-Paul SartrePhilosophyAbortionGay rightsDavid Bryantguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
After Booker snub, Adam Roberts in running for SF honour Yellow Blue Tibia joins a distinguished shortlist for the British Science Fiction Association's best novel awardTipped as the science fiction novel that would finally win a Booker prize for the genre, Adam Roberts's Yellow Blue Tibia failed to even make the longlist for the UK's most prestigious literary award last year, but has just been shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association's best novel prize alongside some of the biggest names in the genre.Set in Russia in 1946, Roberts's novel sees a group of Soviet SF authors concocting a story about aliens poised to invade the earth which, post-Chernobyl, starts to come true. Last summer, acclaimed science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson said it ought to have won the Booker. A professor of 19th-century literature at the Royal Holloway as well as an author, Roberts is shortlisted alongside Ursula K LeGuin for her historical fantasy Lavinia, China Miéville's surreal venture into crime fiction, The City and the City, and previous winner Stephen Baxter's tale of the survivors of a drowned earth, Ark."I am really delighted to be shortlisted ... The list of winners of the novel prize, going back to John Brunner's marvellous Stand on Zanzibar in 1970, doesn't contain a single second-rate book – not one in all that time," said Roberts on learning of his shortlisting. He pronounced himself "surprised" to be among the finalists, "provoked in part by the fact that I've never been shortlisted for this award before". "That only makes me more chuffed to be on the list this year, of course," he said. "It's particularly nice to be in such extraordinary company: any of the other three could win and deserve it."The contenders for the prize are nominated by BSFA members who then vote for their favourite, with the winners to be announced on 4 April at the Eastercon convention. Niall Harrison, editor of the BSFA's journal, Vector, said he was surprised to see some "much-discussed" books fail to make the shortlist, including Robinson's Galileo's Dream, the late Robert Holdstock's Avilion and Kit Whitfield's In Great Waters. Margaret Atwood's post-apocalyptic The Year of the Flood and Iain Banks's Transition also missed out on a shortlisting. "But the four nominees do showcase the strength and breadth of the SF and fantasy being published in the UK at the moment – from metafictional historical fantasy (Lavinia) to a deep-space voyage (Ark) – and it's hard to pick a front-runner," Harrison said. "It's particularly pleasing to see Adam Roberts receive his (overdue) first nomination, in the light of the Booker fuss kicked up by Kim Stanley Robinson last summer."This year's awards also saw science fiction author Hal Duncan withdraw from contention for the non-fiction prize, after being nominated for his essay "Ethics and Enthusiasm". "There are other voices you should be listening to first," Duncan wrote on his blog, pointing to fellow shortlist Deepa D's essay feeds.guardian.co.uk |