WHEN I was a boy there was a bit of a craze for having tortoises as pets. I realise that you shouldn’t, of course, keep tortoises as pets but the 1960s were another universe where they did things differently. I reckon the tortoise trend came from the TV …

All history is local, as someone once said. Or if they didn’t, they should have. Every great event that has shaped the world over thousands of years happened where somebody lived, or where somebody worked, or where somebody just happened to be walking past …

… ’s theer? Ian! Ian who? Ian McMillan, who’s writing a column … part in just about every novel you’ve ever read as …

… Orchestra, who has collaborated with Ian McMillan on A Northern Score. Image … Live on August 1. Visit booking. trafalgartickets.com or call 0343 …

THE other day I walked up Wombwell (always up Wombwell, always down Darfield, obviously) to get some new glasses at the optician’s. I’ve been wearing glasses for decades and I was becoming used to wearing them for ever, but when I went to have my eye test …

Last Saturday it was my enormous pleasure to introduce the wonderful poet and performer Michael Rosen to a packed room of children and adults at the Lightbox in Barnsley town centre. I said in my introduction that the first thing Michael said when he …

Over the Christmas period I managed to Sellotape myself to the settee for long enough to watch one of my favourite films, White Christmas. People say, with some justification, that’s it’s a shallow and sentimental film which is fine because I’m a shallow …

… might call a road the Ian McMillan Parkway, with a statue of … end, like a pair of bookends!

… with the help of book-loving pupils. Greenfield Primary … got involved in building the bookcases. Deputy headteacher, Rebecca Wright, … helped to pick the bookcases, they helped with the … opening, poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan visited the school yesterday, …

The name’s McMillan, Ian McMillan, licensed to fade away. Well, … profile as I began to publish my painstakingly-written but little … . Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond books, was a well …