What are our most enduring images of a place: England, Europe? How did we come by them? How were they formed? How, if ever, are they changed? The first ”recitation” I recall ever having to learn by heart was The Daffodils by William Wordsworth, writes Ishtiyaq Shukri.
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/ 5 December 2005
Lapels in Britain have for some weeks been festooned with red poppies to mark the end of World War I on November 11 1918. Poppies, because they were the first flowers to bloom from the battlefields of Flanders after the war ended. Red, folklore has it, because the soil was drenched with blood.
I am writing from London on the day that Muslim leaders meet Prime Minister Tony Blair in Downing Street to discuss a response to the London blasts. I wish them well — I still await a satisfactory response to a letter I sent last year enquiring about the number of Iraqi civilians killed by coalition forces since the invasion of Iraq in April 2003.