FEAST OR FAMINE

Cities for Life Day is celebrated annually on 30 November. It was first celebrated in 2002. The celebration of Cities for Life Day helps promote the abolishment of the death penalty. The day supports the abolition of the death penalty around the world. The first European state that abolished the death penalty was the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (present-day Italy), under the reign of Pietro Leopoldo, later Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. He issued the decree on November 30, 1786, so Tuscany became the first civil state that abolished torture and capital punishment. To commemorate the day, cities illuminate their symbolic monuments, like Atomium in Brussels, the Colosseum in Rome and the Plaza de Santa Ana in Madrid. This event is supported by international human rights organizations that are gathered together in the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Simila

Before I Go   (2017 posthumously) is the autobiography of prolific British writer Catherine Cookson. Catherine Cookson (1906-1998) commences writing this autobiography in 1984 at the age of 78, with remembrances of her illnesses and doctors. She moves onto meeting her husband Tom, their marriage in 1940, and the first year of the war when she had ‘ten blind evacuees and mental patients in the house.’ Her bad physical health led to ‘unspoken’ years of ‘nervous hysteria’ in which she describes the stigma of mental health issues that fed her world with ‘fear, hysteria and self-pity.’ She says she wasn’t ’only absolutely fearing – I became aggressive!’ But this gives her an insight into the minds of many people around her, suffering in silence, and being misunderstood: ‘I have been living behind a facade for years.’ Cookson does reach a state of ‘peace of mind’ through her writing and her constant companion Tom. He died less than three weeks after her. Her autobiogra

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).