Tribute Podcasts

The year 2016 has seen a seemingly high number of notable deaths with inevitable eulogies and tributes following. I wanted to write about someone completely anonymous to the world at large but who meant something to those who loved him. I had the idea of somebody going through problems of their own glimpsing a name on a plaque on a park bench and this triggering a journey of discovery, both literal and in his own life. The central character is a little lost and has a few issues he hasn

This piece takes its name from John Donne's poem of the same name. I checked my emails on the way home from a conference on antibiotic resistance and there was a round robin email asking for my favourite poem. I sent them 'A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning', a beautiful, clever poem in which Donne argues that love creates a connection between people that is unbreakable. At one point he uses the image of a thread of gold that runs from one to the other: I've used this image with my children when they didn't want me to go away, and I think of this thread often when I'm far from my loved ones. It's comforting, because it allows me to feel a connection. That connection, that pulling on the heart strings, is what this piece is about. That, and the fast-approaching horror of the post-antibiotic era, where people will die from previously minor ailments. What strikes me most about this awful prospect is that it doesn

Some writers say they have a 'knot

There are a few hats that I currently wear but I

I spent a lot of years with a scattergun approach to life, doing a bit of this and a bit of that, but always leaning towards my creative side. I worked for BBC Radio Drama, wrote and directed plays, self published a novel, trained and then practised as an Alexander Technique teacher, and wrote marketing materials for small companies, to name a few. Then the unthinkable happened, I became a full time carer for, and then lost, my lovely husband. Life didn

The catalyst of my Tribute was a bookmark. I wanted my tribute to focus on the emotions that death/bereavement brings up. Death is so unfathomable our brain pulls in many different ways to understand it. The emotion of my piece comes from a few of the comedic memories within it being personal to me. Stories that make me smile when I think of them now, and were a joy to write, and more importantly get right in this Tribute. Alongside this is a twist that changes the whole genre of the piece. This allowed me to explore questions about the finality of death, and if we had a way to overcome it how we would use it. Finally, and most importantly, this becomes as much about the person giving the tribute, and shows the effect that people can have in the lives of others. What bigger Tribute could there be than shaping someone else's thoughts and life?

...is a thinly-veiled fictionalisation of my own father, who died 4 years ago. The trigger for this whole project though was the death of my mother who died in March. The moment when your second parent dies is a big one in anyone

I met a sculptor on Twitter who told me that before unveiling her latest work she had to chop a piece off her statue because it offended a surviving relative of the subject. The ceremony would not have gone ahead if the appendage had stayed on. The artistic process is not sacred. If people can butt in, they will. Sometimes two hands are better than one. Artists often collaborate. We see it in the case of the master and apprentice. Occasionally the apprentice becomes more celebrated than the master. What happens to that pseudo-parental, curatorial relationship then? And when one dies, what sort of eulogy does the other give? What if the apprentice were the first to go?

I originally wrote Milestone several years ago - before the Hillsborough Inquest was announced. When the Inquest verdicts were delivered I realised I could adapt the script with just a very small number of changes. I liked the idea of the character seeing the events as a catalyst for change - a theme referred to by many of the victims

Tributes are usually given by family members so my starting point was,

My tribute is actually based on parts of the life of my granddad Alan who sadly passed away in April 2016. The character is actually an amalgam of all of my grandparents- my English grandma was a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, my Polish/German grandma was the best storyteller that ever lived and did indeed escape Nazi Germany in a hurry. My Polish/German grandpa used to do magic tricks. My English grandpa used to bury sweets on the hills for me and my brothers to find. And all four of them loved to tell me different, exaggerated stories about their lives- apart from perversely, my English codebreaking Grandma, who had perhaps the most exciting story to tell. I loved writing the tribute as it felt cathartic but also actually a fitting and wonderful tribute, not just to my grandpa but my other grandparents too.

James Bellwether wonders how many people were called before someone picked up the phone to him to tell him that his own Dad was dying. That is what it is like being the child of a 'great

A woman and her older sister, both in their late thirties, go back to Wales to visit their long-widowed father as he lies dying in his hospital bed. All three are estranged from each other and as the younger sister narrates the details of their final dealings, she reflects upon her father