I was given a book for Christmas entitled ‘The Wild Places’ by Robert MacFarlane. He tackles the question ‘Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain?’ by embarking on a series of beautifully described journeys, spending nights out on cliff...

Like most boys of their age, our older two – at six and four – have a lurid love of a pseudo-scientific tale I tell them. It’s a tale that, in turn, some other adult told me as a child. About how a frog won’t jump out of a saucepan of water as it’s...

Recently I re-learned a valuable lesson in terms of the way we manage our children. I think it might be applicable to the Generous journey. See what you think. You know how you get stuck with things? Not so much in a rut, as in a pattern? Resigned...

I read recently that the cost of 2007’s natural disasters was $63 billion dollars. That’s about the same as the amount made available in 2008 to bail out two UK banks: RBS and Lloyds Banking Group. The world can make hard cash appear if it needs...

In 1647, the English Parliament passed a law that made Christmas illegal. Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas festivities, considering feasting and revelry on a ‘holy day’ immoral. Anybody caught celebrating Christmas was arrested. The ban...

We like to encourage conversation here at Generous. Our mantra is that ’there’s wisdom in the crowd’. So when Marianne Young emailed to say she was cross about one of our actions – Eat Less Meat – we wanted to know why and we...

It’s been a bug-bear of mine for a while. But I bite my lip and quash my instinct, worried that I’m just being some sort of Victorian moralist – a borderline bigot. Then I read Laura’s thoughts on returning from Kenya about how we could learn a thing...