Category: blog
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I couldn’t miss the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt at Tate Modern
I went to see the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt at the weekend. It was on display for four days only in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. I didn’t really have time to make the trip to London from Edinburgh where I live now. But I had to be there. For you. I knew that if…
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Ending new HIV transmission in the UK by 2030 is within our grasp — we must not fail
The global consquences of the Trump adminsration’s disengagement with HIV prevention could be lethal. In the UK we have the opportunity to write a different story. But there is no time to lose. During the terrifying onslaught of announcements from the Trump administration over the last few weeks, it has been his foreign policy interventions,…
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‘You and me together, fighting for our love’ – how Bronski Beat’s The Age of Consent defined an era and why it endures 40 years on
On Monday the BBC’s flagship arts programme, Front Row, marked the 40th anniversary of the release of The Age of Consent, Bronski Beat’s debut album, on 15th October 1984. Presenter Samira Ahmed talked to Laurie Belgrave, founder and director of the south London queer bar and performance collective, The Chateau, and novelist, Matt Cain, formerly editor of Attitude. How far…
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Sixty-three down: memories of birthdays past — and the long road to Dundee
Today is my 63rd birthday. Age comes increasingly quickly it seems. As far as I can recall, most of my pervious sixty-two birthdays have been spent in one of four places: surburban Cheshire where I grew up, Lancaster where I studied as an undergraduate, London where I spent my formative adult years, and Edinburgh, the…
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How Scotland can beat stigma and end HIV transmission by 2030 — and why we must
‘What one can see is the present, the dimension of landscape which is in front of us now. But now is shaped by the past, backed by it, as it were, the way the glass of a mirror is backed by silver; it’s what lies behind the present that gives it its color and sheen.…
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Jake Wightman’s victory in Eugene speaks to the best our sport can be
Asked on the BBC by Jeanette Kwakye how many times he had watched back his gold medal-winning 1500m race at the World Championships, Jake Wightman’s answer, for all its modesty, was a reminder of the gulf between his participation in athletics and mine. He had seen it first while in anti-doping after the race, not…