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Can fiction help save the planet?
With a spate of extreme weather events over recent months, we’re all becoming more aware of the climate crisis. However, you might not have heard of Earth Day, established in 1970 to draw attention to the importance of environmental conservation and sustainability. It’s marked each year on April 22. This year’s theme is the planet…
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Let’s celebrate Mother Language Day
In 1999, UNESCO designated 21 February as International Mother Language Day. It’s an opportunity for all of us to acknowledge and celebrate language diversity and to resist the suppression of minority languages. Have you heard of it? I might not have done if I hadn’t visited a book fair in Dhaka, Bangladesh, almost four decades…
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Books can be your saviour at the festive dining table
Christmas is the time when everyone is welcome around the dining table. Isn’t that a lovely sentiment? Yet it can be stressful for some. The frazzled cook battling lumpy gravy when the meal is already three hours late. The young couple stuffed to bursting point after eating two dinners, one with each set of parents.…