Katharine Quarmby
Award-winning writer, editor and journalist.
Category: Uncategorized
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I suppose it’s not that surprising that some Conservative MPs have been spluttering over breakfast as they read that Raquel Rolnik, the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, has been over here in the UK, examining whether we are providing adequate housing to particular groups – among them disabled people, homeless Roma, Gypsies and…
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A round-up of reviews here. Ian Birrell, who also reviewed my last book, Scapegoat: why we are failing disabled people, posted a very thoughtful review in the Observer. He concluded that it was “An important book by an impressive journalist” although he did feel there was a bit too much reporting from Dale Farm which does…
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No Place to Call Home will be published next Thursday – after pretty much 18 months work on it, and not much else, and some years before that, of course, spending time with the Romani Gypsy and Traveller communities (and, in later times, getting to know some of the newly arrived Roma as well). The…
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Well, finally, the book is nearing publication, and as a taster, here’s the book trailer about it- As I say on the Unbeaten Path page of this website, thanks go to all the people who helped me make the trailer: Particular thanks go to Sam Lee, who was kind enough to sing one of the…
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Yesterday evening I think I surpassed my personal best – four different soups within twenty-four hours. I have very good teeth, so this is a pity (in my forties and no fillings, Iranian genetics apparently). I’ll be in my care home, begging for soup, and being given other nasty crunchy things like Kiev and fish…
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Over the last few months, I’ve worked with the Centre for the Modern Family, a relatively new but influential think-tank, and its expert panel, authoring a report on the state of care in the UK. It was an interesting but very disturbing report to write. It was very clear that those supporting disabled people, who…
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In 1975 my dad’s brother, Andrew Quarmby, then an aid worker in Nepal, invited us to join him on a trip to the Himalayas. My mum and dad trained us hard, despite the lamentable lack of hills in Norfolk; the one small slope near our home became our ‘Everest’ and we walked up and down…
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In 2005 I started to investigate the RSPCA’s prosecution record – below for BBC Newsnight. I am posting here the (fully legalled) script I wrote at the time as a (freelance) reporter, just before the Animal Welfare Act became law. I wondered whether it was worth reviving this, seven years after transmission, but as I…
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It must be well over a year since I first sent a draft of my story for primary school children, Rosie gets the Plot, to my agent, for some feedback about this story about sibling rivalry – and how the parents use gardening to get their older child, Rosie, to accept the new arrival, baby…
Katharine Quarmby 