IN MY OWN TIME

By the author of 'Thoughts on Being Old' and the acclaimed 'Crazy Age', Jane Miller first worked in publishing then as an English teacher in a London comprehensive and finally as a Professor at the London University Institute of Education. Her wonderful, ranging intelligence is brought to bear on these deep and elegant thoughts on political scandals, on 'the sweetness of hope of the Occupy Movement', on reading Tolstoy in Russian, on Syrian refugees, on the demise of the NHS and on struggles with technology. She was able to interview two major public figures, Eric Hobsbawm and Tony Benn, and those pieces are included here too. She writes an intriguing mix of the public and the private and ends with the scattering of the ashes of her husband Karl Miller. She touches on the First World War and Doris Lessing, the end of Thatcher, schools and the feral underclass, the royal We, and democracy. 2016 Virago hardback, 307pp.