by Maggie Ling | Aug 11, 2026 | Creativity, Human Rights, Writing
Writing stories at an early age, words were my playmates, spending time in their company, getting to know them, to understand them, was pure pleasure. Several decades later I spoke of my childish delight in Once upon a time . . . my first On the Shelf podcast. The...
by Maggie Ling | Jul 20, 2026 | Human Rights, Politics
I’m not a great sports lover. Consider boxing cannot be considered a ‘sport’ by any sane, thinking individual; and certain rugby only receives the respect it doesn’t deserve because it was nurtured in a private school: institutions guaranteed to fuck up boys’ minds,...
by Maggie Ling | Aug 11, 2025 | Climate, History, Human Rights, Politics
High above the Central Court of England and Wales, commonly known as The Old Bailey, standing tall and straight, a sword pointing to the heavens in her right hand, a pair of scales hanging from her left, her feet resting on the globe beneath them, her spiky crown...
by Maggie Ling | Jan 30, 2025 | Climate, History, Human Rights, Politics
In a time of universal deceit, George Orwell may have said, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Having found this quote on a website, not Wikipedia, a fact-checked biography, a memoir by the man himself, or in my well-thumbed Penguin Dictionary of Quotations, I...
by Maggie Ling | Dec 18, 2024 | Climate, History
My childhood was spent in rural East Anglia: the 1950s and early 60s when the post-war push for food production encouraged arable farmers to invest in bigger machines to harvest bigger crops; and bigger fields meant the removal of hedges. ‘Grubbing out’, thus...
by Maggie Ling | Sep 6, 2024 | Human Rights, Politics, Women’s Rights
A child early to walking and talking and, it could be said, early to finding my writer’s voice, in that I wrote my first short story collection when I was five or six – see On the Shelf podcast – my need to express myself creatively has continued throughout my life,...
by Maggie Ling | Jul 5, 2024 | Climate, Racism, Refugees
I had hoped to write this if not before then during Refugee Week, which the UNHCR package I received prior to it, informed me was June 17-23, but family commitments prevented me from doing so. Though I did display the enclosed poster on my sitting-room window, were it...
by Maggie Ling | Feb 15, 2024 | Health, Politics, War
Last year brought 75th birthday ‘celebrations’ for the NHS, the state of Israel, and for me. The last British troops left Haifa four days after I almost killed my mother, the home-birth of her second child suddenly a medical emergency, our hospital discharge coming a...
by Maggie Ling | Jan 10, 2023 | Politics, Women’s Rights
Christmas almost upon us, the cold snap coming to an end, shopping for spices in the fabulous market of this fine city, the friendly stallholder asked me how I was. A dangerous question to a writer partial to telling it like it is. A bit down, I answered… voice...
by Maggie Ling | Nov 30, 2022 | Politics, Women’s Rights
While football-crazy folks spend large amounts of money flying to Doha to watch super-rich footballers kick a ball about a stadium (built by poor immigrant workers, some dying in the process), I’d like to take you back to the Qatari capital and February 29th 2020....
