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I stumbled across this Michael. It is too good for this site. Nuff said.

hi michael, I enjoyed your frank voice and Hyde Park Corner approach. There are some juicy details here and your call for change is clearly written between the lines. Polished writing. Backed.

BRILLIANT!!!!
The world is about perspective.
BACKED!!!!!!

Home Thoughts From Aboard

Hi Michael,

I've read a couple of yours, Judas and Mother Teresa, great writing, very polished, what you would expect from a professional, you clearly don't have the time to visit this site often enough to get your work the further exposure it deserves, in fact with quotes from the Guardian etc. I wonder why you are using this site at all apart from the promote your excellent work. Really interesting stuff here, not only a great writer but you have a lovely slantways views on life, an observational and reflective locus that enables us to get inside familiar issues from an unfamiliar angle.

Well done, will back this and will do everything I can to promote your work. Your help with SL in this month of December would be very welcome.

Best wishes and good luck
Andrew W
(Sanctuary's Loss)

Being an expat I backed your book before reading it. I have been up to my ears with work and also completing Blindfold which is now here in all its beauty!!! Please give it a glance if you find time.

You are too clever for comfort. Of course you know your prose is excellent easy and capitvating to read...historical facts thrown in at the right moment are interesting and provide one of the many records of a day millions watched enjoyed approved of.
I dont want to give my views on any of the political content I dont feel this is an appropriate platform. I would guess that reading my profile you would know the likely stance i would take. anyway.
So my thoughts are on your writing skills which are soo practised professional and provocative. very well written. Marion

I spent the afternoon compiling this article, trying to get it finished before going in to teach a class I had unexpectedly been called in for this evening.

When i got back tonight there were 3 comments from readers in my inbox, so I discovered that Counterpunch had published it. It was a rewarding feeling.

The story is terrifying.
http://www.counterpunch.org/dickinson05282008.html

Apology accepted.

But the existence of an enormously privileged, fabulously wealthy, so-called 'royal' family, who consider themselves superior to other human beings, who are saluted as 'majesties' and eat off gold plates while many of their 'subjects' starve, is something I will not accept.

Sorry, Michael, perhaps I was a little brusque. I apologise.

Arise, Sir Cutley!

How odd that anyone can be this worked up about the royal family.

Remembering Princess Diana
Who's Cheating?
By MICHAEL DICKINSON

There must have been more than a few who suddenly stiffened at the opening words of the Bishop of London, Right Reverend Dr Richard Chartres, when he took the pulpit to address the congregation gathered in the Guard's Chapel near Buckingham Palace, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death.

For several long moments he stood there, his head bowed in silence, before he looked up and asked a simple direct question.

"Who's cheating?"

Again he paused, uncomfortably long for several members of the royal family and invited guests to ask themselves if he could possibly be talking about them. They would have wiped the metaphorical sweat from their brow and breathed a sigh of relief as the Bishop continued.

"Those were the words of Princess Diana to a pair of elderly inmates playing a game of Beggar My Neighbour' at an old folk's home which she was visiting. How they all laughed."

His question was not a challenge to the morals of the congregation, but merely a reminder of the natural fun and spontaneity of the princess and her intuitive rapport with members of the public, which he went on to eulogize. But still, his first stark question seemed to linger in the air like a bad smell, stronger than the perfume of the profusion of English roses that decked the chapel.

"Who's cheating?" Who's playing around? Who's being unfaithful to their wedding vows? Who's having an extra-marital affair? Who is committing adultery?

Many eyes may have shifted for a moment from the pontificating priest in the pulpit to ponder uncomfortably on the backs of the heads of three of the most important guests in the front pew Queen Elizabeth, the Duke of Edinburgh, and their son, the Prince of Wales. How had the question affected them?

At least Elizabeth could not accuse herself, her fidelity unquestioned, (or was there more to her close relationship with Lord Porchester in the fifties and sixties than a shared passion for racing, and Prince Andrew the result?); but she may have reflected sadly on her role as a world-famous cuckquean, cheated on countless times in the past by the sour-faced old man sitting next to her, the man she used to call "my viking prince".

Apart from a long term affair with the Queen's cousin, Princess Alexandra, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, was a well-known womaniser in his hey-day, with a string of affairs with polo wives, duchesses, countesses, and several famous actresses, including, it is alleged, Jane Russell, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Shirley MacLaine. Yet this was the man who wrote to his daughter-in-law Diana calling her a "harlot and a trollop", telling her that she should put up with his son's long running affair with Camilla Parker Bowles.

Yes, to the lugubrious-faced son, sitting next to the Duke on the front pew at the service in memory of his ex-wife, the question, "Who's cheating?" must have rung most accusingly. If he had abandoned mistress Camilla after the fairy-tale wedding to his adoring virgin bride Diana, and remained faithful to her alone, then there would have been none of the scandalous mire of events that led Diana to her conducting her own extra-marital affairs, most notably with red-haired cavalry officer James Hewitt (rumoured to be Prince Harry's real father), and eventually to her tragic untimely death in the Paris car crash with her latest amour, Harrod's heir Dodi al-Fayed.

But Charles admitted in a television interview in 1994 that he had never loved Diana, and that during the marriage he had been carrying on an affair with Mrs Parker Bowles, who he had originally met at a polo match may years before.

"There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded," a teary eyed Diana explained for the break up with Charles in her own retaliatory TV interview.

The place next to Charles on the front pew at the memorial service was conspicuously empty. His now wife, Her Royal Majesty, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, although invited by her stepsons, had decided it more appropriate that she not attend, saying that she feared her presence would detract from what should be a celebration of Diana's life. Instead, the woman whom Diana called "the Rottweiler" watched the service on television alone at her country home. Next week she plans to jet off without her husband for a holiday in the Meditteranean with a small group of girlfriends.

Camilla had originally intended to be there at her husband's side, and is said to be furious at having been pressured by royal aides to decline, but perhaps it's just as well she wasn't.

Although a strong-minded woman, perhaps she too might have quailed and trembled at the Bishop of London's sudden question from the pulpit. An accusation from beyond the grave from the ex-wife of the man she had secretly committed adultery with, and caused such pain and misery:

"Who's cheating?"

Fuch Faschism!!!!