I`m working on a new short story, inspired by a lunch we experienced during the Diamond Jubilee weekend. It`s called Person up a Tree, or something like it. It happens rarely these days, that something clicks, an inner engine revs, the thing happens that has to happen when you simply know that there is this […]
I have enrolled in a course offered by the journal Jewish Renaissance, of which the first session is an account of women in biblical art, or is it woman artists and biblical topics? Whichever, the great Artemisia Gentileschi will feature in the first session, so I am curious to attend. My knowledge of art, art […]
A few months ago I began to write something that might become memoirs – but was interrupted by the tragedy of the war in Ukraine. Like millions, and instantly reliving my shock and horror during the Cuba crisis, when I was sixteen, I lost focus. But in fact there are things I need to focus […]
I have been distracted for the last few weeks by having Covid, and by the shadow of the news which is there whenever we put on the TV or radio, and won`t go away however much I might will it to. Scary, depressing, and it has stopped me in my tracks with the writing of […]
I haven`t been attending to my website. There was one day in the week when, according to Google Analytics, nobody came to it. More than that, they didn`t come for a full 0 seconds. Yes – this needed to be recorded. So I feel safely incognito. But that doesn`t mean I`m not working. Peter Gimpel […]
Things seem to be happening, and I realise I haven`t blogged for ages. Not that many people read this website. Most of the Contact Messages I get tend to be from people with weird email addresses, weirder names, and include lists of pornographic activities I might be interested in. I delete them. If anyone reading […]
More than ten years ago we were invited out to dinner, to friends. I sat opposite a Rabbi, someone we knew, though we didn`t know each other well. This Rabbi had written and published one or two books, or perhaps three. I had read one of them and really admired it. About comparative religion. I […]
In the new year a collection of my short stories, `Tell it Not,` will be published by Red Heifer Press, publishers in California. Next week, at the UK festival of Jewish culture known as Limmud, I will present a session named One Collection or Two. Because the reason I looked online for a publisher in […]
We saw Indecent at the Menier Chocolate Factory, and loved it. A play within a play, actually. It was a play by writer Paula Vogel, directed by Rebecca Taichman. And it was about another play – God of Vengeance – written in 1907 by Yiddish poet and playwright Sholem Asch. A stunning and moving production, […]
I seem to have been busy recently. And the world seems more alarming than ever. We watch our grandchildren, guided by our sons and daughters-in-law, with some apprehension – not because of what we, or their parents may have taught them, or handed down to them, but more because of the state of the world. […]