Two of my pieces that appeared over the last ten days: one in the Financial Times, the other in The Times (sadly off limits unless you can find a way beyond their paywall). The Financial Times piece is well worth a look just for the superb photographs commissioned by the FT and taken by Peter Marlow of Magnum.

Raja Alem, the brilliant Saudi novelist and artist, who has just won the Arabic Booker Prize for her novel The Dove’s Necklace. This is great, great news. I interviewed Raja with her sister Shadia for Edge of Arabia as they will often collaborate. Raja sometimes provides text for Shadia’s work, though that’s not a good way of putting it. Rather than one ‘providing’ for the other they combine as if twins, finishing each other’s sentences and often appearing in one another’s dreams.

Here they are long, long ago:

Here are the spreads from my piece in the FT Magazine. If you click on each page it should become larger and more legible.

All material (c) Financial Times and Peter Marlow 2011

Was the almost sinister-sounding title of my RSA debate on Thursday. It was billed as me vs. Clive Aslet, Editor at Large of Country Life (one day, when I grow up, I want to be Editor at Large of something, anything – could there be a better job title?). But it wasn’t really a vs. kind of debate, and we spent a lot of the time agreeing with each other.

As is the way with switched-on orgs like the RSA, if you missed the debate you can listen to it here, read the liveblog here, at onemanandhisblog, or read Matthew Taylor’s take on things here.

Lots of interesting ideas cropped up during the event. Will blog about them tomorrow..

A world run entirely by small voluntary groups would be a disaster. But so would one without any of them, or an understanding of what they can do. We need to do more to recognize the intrinsic value in small associations, as well as their limitations, and that they form an important element in our social ecology.

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