Monday October 25 - up very early to take the eight-and-a-half hours Air Asia flight from Gold Coast, Australia, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where I was staying with Mohana Gill and her family.  The flight time made me realise just...

Monday October 18, took a four hour bus ride from Sydney to Canberra, where I was met by my long term history colleague Edgar Crook, author of the Vegetarian History of Australia. I've worked with Edgar for many years online...

I'm now in Australia for a mixture of family and veg interests, and meeting a lot of people I've known online for many years but, until now, had never been able to meet in real life. October 12 , to...

The Jakarta IVU Congress last week was a huge success, one of the best ever, then some of us went on to the beautiful island of Bali. Thursday Oct 7 - flew from Jakarta to Bali on Air Asia, then...

The main part of the 39th IVU World Veg Congress in Jakarta, Indonesia, has now ended. So this is just a personal view of the last five days. I've had the privilege of staying at the home of Susianto, IVU...

... or Indonesia, Malaysia or India... by the time you read this I will be on my five-week trek around all these countries, giving talks to many veg groups along the way, and then on to another week in Africa...

Last February Jeff Nelson met Hazel & me at LAX and had the unfortunate task of telling me that my aunt had died while we were en route.  It was unexpected at that time, but my Aunt Vera was 93...

A few days ago I was co-opted onto the Board of Directors of the Vegetarian Society UK - that being the world's oldest, founded in 1847, and still going strong 163 years later with 33 staff. Sadly I don't get paid...

The long school summer vacation was originally intended for the children to be able to help with the harvest. Nowadays of course they just get a long time off and the parents have the problem of keeping them occupied. Grain...

While we were in California recently, Hazel and I had a brief encounter with the American way of making big bucks out of other people's health problems. Though we also visited True North Health in Santa Rosa and saw that...

The International Vegetarian Union is 102 years old, but it has achieved more in the last 6 years than the previous 96. This has been done by people in the developing world - where most of the world's population lives....

Last weekend I was given the opportunity to speak at the excellent first conference of the Christian Vegetarian Association UK, jointly organised with the Theology Department of Leeds University. Despite my own lack of any religion, my previous visits to...

A couple of weeks ago I gave a lecture for our local University of the Third Age (= over 60s). Not about veg*ism as it will take a while longer for our local farmers to be ready for that, just about...

The main reason for the creation of the International Vegetarian Union, way back in 1908, was simply to help veg*ns in different countries communicate with each other.  This was done mostly by exchanging newsletters, journals and personal letters - but...

OK, just some of them but we all want our family tree to have something dramatic in it. In 1643 Dorothy Hazzard was helping puritans to escape thru the port of Bristol, England, so that they could follow those on...

If we ask meat-eaters what they think 'vegetarian' means, most would probably say 'someone who does not eat meat' - but that is not at all how I see it. I'm a positive veg*n, I eat plant foods. I define...

Time seems to pass more slowly in the countryside during the summer. The rush of spring flowers has gone, and the birds can find plenty of food under cover in the hedgerows. We actually see a lot more birds in...

The first people who called themselves 'vegetarian' were in fact vegan. This has now been established conclusively with resources not previously available. We have now shown that until 1847 *all* uses the word 'vegetarian' came from people associated with Alcott...

This is about my old friend Pete, who I hadn't seen for 20 years. Then It turned out he died on the same day I got the urge to find him again. Coincidence? I know some veg*ns are interested in this...

One of the biggest problems in researching vegetarian history is that biographies are too often written by meat-eaters. Probably the worst example in recent years was the movie 'Gandhi' which won 8 Oscars in 1983 - in the entire 3...