John Bird

3 weeks ago | bigissue.com | John Bird

Skip to header Skip to main content Don’t miss this special offer - 12 issues for just £12! Once upon a time people were in the audience but now they all seem to be on the stage As a self-appointed historian, never studying it but using it as a guide to action in my own life, you could say that often I am wide of the mark.

1 month ago | bigissue.com | John Bird

It is the loss of belief in the effectiveness of government itself that registers most worryingly Lord Salisbury, the prime minister at the end of the Victorian 19th century and the beginning of the 20th reputedly said that “whatever happens will be for the worse”. Hence “don’t do things”; and do your best to keep things as they are. Certainly Keir Starmer must recognise this condition as his 10 months in office has proved.

1 month ago | bigissue.com | John Bird

In Middlemarch, many of the characters suffer from 'the debris of history' – things haven't changed I am finally drawing to a close with the largest novel I have read in decades. Nearly 700 pages. George Eliot’s Middlemarch is like a compendium of people who you see – before they do – what a wretched mistake they are about to make. How it will all end up, untangle itself, I have no idea. But by the time you read this I will have reached the end and will know the outcome.

1 month ago | bigissue.com | John Bird

Our class system is unchanged since the Victorian times. That's why we're in such a mess The ninepenny wash and brush-up at Waverley station in Edinburgh was the best I have ever had. A wash and brush-up was where you got to half-strip in a bathroom and got in a good clean, with razors for shaving to add to the sense of cleanliness. Going into J Sainsbury pre-supermarket – when it was an old-fashioned Victorian-looking place – to buy a halfpenny’s worth of broken biscuits was a joy.

1 month ago | bigissue.com | John Bird

In all of John's weekly columns for Big Issue, there's one overriding topic that keeps the ink and ideas flowing Each Wednesday morning I rise early and begin the process of writing my 800/900 word column. For 30 years I have been doing the same. That’s about 45,000 words a year, multiplied by 30 equals 1,350,000 words. One day I hope to go through this mountain of words and extract the most useful of them. Some, I remember, are precise and clever, thoughtful and clear.