The Queen's LenderGeorge Heriot, jeweller to King James VI and I, moves with the Court from Edinburgh to London to take over the English throne. It is 1603. Life is a Babel of languages and glittering new wealth. The Scottish court speaks Danish, German, Middle Scots, French and Latin. King James gives Shakespeare his first secure position, and to calm the perfidious religious tensions, he commissions his translation of the Bible. George becomes wealthier than the king

Perhaps a splash or two dashed once or twice across Niagara Falls

looking for her missing dog Quincy

‘Talkback’ (political and historical poems) and ‘Fast Talking PIs’ (sequences of dialogue)

The composer Aleksandr Lokshin wrote a symphonic poem based on the poem

Swanzy retained enough of a post-colonial sensibility to be positively sympathetic to the nationalist thrust of the writing

with excerpt from Season of Migration to the North

Rose Fyleman

Sveta Litvak

Grace Wells

Abdulmajid Ben Jalloun: "A Moroccan in Manchester" excerpt from the memoirs Fi’l Tufula [In my Childhood]

main rival to George’s claim to be patron saint of England

Safaa Ennagar A short story Amoeba