Germany – STUFF HAPPENS

Berlin in June

Such beautiful blue skies! Parks, pleasure boats on the Spree and across the imperial parade ground a soft breeze from the east cools the walls of the restored Reichstag, and stands up the tricolour of black and red and gold. Through the warm afternoon, electric scooters bearing citizens glide to and fro. These mellow scenes […]

by Alex Hickman

Fifty-Nine Years Four Days published on Amazon (kindle)

My novel describes four days in the life of Simon Tindall, a British banker and MEP (he is, or rather was, a close ally of Tony Blair), who discovers he has only a few months to live. Dazed and distraught, Simon begins to evaluate his life, and weigh his successes and failures. Unable to find intimacy with his […]

by Alex Hickman

Which way? The High Line, Liberty and Britain’s road to nowhere

Last week I was working in New York and with time to kill at midday I walked the High Line, a mile-long park created along a derelict stretch of elevated railway built in the 1930s to run freight along Manhattan’s West Side. Originally the trains ran at ground level, with cow boys hired to ride […]

by Alex Hickman

Ambivalence

I am about to publish my first novel, called 59 Years 4 Days. The novel’s main character is a middle-aged man called Simon who learns that he has a fatal illness. Simon is a baby-boomer, a successful member of the Tony Blair generation (TB happens to be a political friend of Simon’s, and a character in the novel). […]

by Alex Hickman

The Eurozone won’t survive in its present form

On the eve of the latest Eurozone bail-out, I listened to a panel of four central bankers (an American, a Japanese, a Cypriot and a Dutchman) discuss the outlook for the global economy. The context was a conference hosted by a global banking group. The panellists were a bright foursome and all commanders of their subject and they […]

by Alex Hickman

Notes on Frankfurt

Walking past the entrance to the European Central Bank I could see the tension in the faces of the chauffeurs and the bodyguards standing by the security gate smoking cigarettes. Towering above them is the money headquarters for a continent of over 300 million people, and things are in bad way. Around the corner in […]

by Alex Hickman

Two black swans prepare for take off

When I was running the cross-party campaign opposing UK membership of the euro (‘europe yes, euro no‘, 2000-03), the things that used to keep me awake at night were the things over which I had no control. I wasn’t worried about raising enough money, or winning the daily skirmishes against our opponents, or building our […]