Stephen Lawrence died 20 years ago today, and as I remember that period my chest is again hollow with fear. You see, the thing is with Stephen Lawrence was that it actually happened, that thing you were always afraid of as a kid. You were always worried that, no matter...

Earlier this week I attended the launch of Sportlobster, a social media platform where sports fans can have all the finely-tuned information that they might want at their fingertips. In an area that is set only to grow, it sounded like an original concept, and so I caught...

Shannon Hardwick is a fantastic poet whose acquaintance I was lucky to make several years ago. Hailing from Texas, drawing her influences from science, music and a keen study of the world around her, her work exudes a rare grace and optimism. On the eve of the publication by Mouthfeel...

"Sometimes they just call you lazy."

On the last day of my Easter holidays, Dr. Phoebe Abe (or, as I know her, my mother) sat down in her living room with me and several women from Somalia, Egypt and Sudan. My mother, a GP, had for some time been looking...

A few weeks ago, Carrie Armstrong (a fellow Huffington Post UK blogger) and I started swapping the occasional link to a hip-hop video, and since we're both huge fans of the genre we thought we should put a mixtape together of the best tunes that we knew. The...

Child abuse. It's probably best to begin with these two words, lest they are lost in any of the analysis to follow. In fact, recent events have actually been an excellent study in how child abuse, however unwittingly, is enabled, neglected and allowed to continue. The initial revelations have been...

Belief is a uniquely potent force. There is something exhilarating about having certainty in your progress towards a goal: of being convinced that, regardless of the obstacles in your way, you are on the correct path. Successful athletes, as we saw at this summer's worth of Games in London, have...

As Danny Boyle showed with his superb direction of the Olympics opening ceremony, art can be at its most compelling when used to convey a message of social progress. The use of mainstream entertainment to make careful observations about society is a well-travelled path; but, like Boyle, it appears that...

"British"

This is
What it means to be British -
To take part in a race,
Hoping to win -
But expecting a last-place finish.
Yes, this is British -
To make it all the way to a tie-break
And then brick it.