Colin Brazier is a former broadcaster for GB News and Sky. He is now a student at the Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester
There were many tributes paid to the Jersey aid worker Simon Boas when he died of throat cancer in July, aged 47. In writing and speaking about his terminal diagnosis with courage and humour, he was admired on the island and beyond. My mother-in-law, having spent years working with aid charities, lives on Jersey and
Could it be that this year, for the first time since the second world war, some UK farms will not produce a harvest? Not even a grain? It may sound like hyperbole, but as an agronomist friend of mine told me recently: these are the worst growing conditions in living memory. The only thing being
As you tuck into a leg of roast lamb this Bank Holiday weekend, consider how religious festivals are a boon for British farmers. The agricultural sector may be struggling overall, but lamb prices have just hit a record high, up £2 per kilo since the start of the year. Simple supply and demand. The surge
Europe’s ablaze, but not on this side of the English Channel. Paris has been besieged. Dutch politics turned upside down. Yet in the country that gave history the Peasant’s Revolt, the only thing British farmers are flailing is hedgerows. As tractors blockade the chancelleries of Belgium and Germany, why is it that the only traffic
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On the podcast: In his new year’s address this year Vladimir Putin made no mention of the war in Ukraine – despite missile strikes over the Christmas period – and now Owen Matthews reports in The Spectator this week rumours that Putin could be looking to broker a land-for-peace deal. Unfortunately – Owen says – this deal
I have come late to farming. There was no epiphany, no eureka moment watching Clarkson’s Farm. The blame lies partly with my neighbour, who’s my running partner and a fellow Pony Club Dad. He’s an agronomist and would enliven our jogs along country lanes with talk of crop rotations. In the end, that other form of
These are lean times for hospitality and retail. But at least pubs and shops have their champions, popping up on our television channels and radio stations. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, or in this case, taxpayer-funded grants. Where, though, are the voices raised for another activity – also struggling before lockdown – and now
It was a big call, sending the royals out and about straight after the Oprah interview. We have to be seen to be believed, as Her Majesty is said to have once observed. It’s a philosophy more complicated than it appears and one which should have the Sussexes worried. As a strategy, it’s not risk-free.
Perhaps you remember footage of the wave. It was mostly from traffic cameras, mute but darkly mesmerising. Millions of gallons of Pacific seawater upended by a 9.0 earthquake and hurled irresistibly inland. A few days later I saw what that meant, turning a corner in my hire-car to find the road blocked by a trawler
I once asked a hospice nurse to describe her job and was surprised when she likened it to midwifery. ‘There are two days,’ she said, ‘which aren’t the full 24 hours. The day you are born, and the day you die.’ Uncertainty, fear and waiting. Having been at my late-wife’s deathbed – and at her
My wife died earlier this month. We knew it was coming. A lump in the breast begat bone tumours, begat liver lesions. In the end, cancer in the brain carried her off quickly. A ‘good death’. I keep staring at my wedding ring and its redundant metallurgy. In one of our final lucid conversations my
