Summary: second in a series of guest blogs from “Elphaba” on the ongoing war in Sudan
There was some great excitement in Singa this week as it was announced that many vehicles had been found and owners could bring proof of ownership and reclaim theirs. Ours was a battered, old, much-loved and very unreliable crate. She appeared to have some kind of sentience: working on a whim for some and not others. Opening and closing the windows was an act of will power (no winders that worked). But she had given great service carrying sheep, produce, people and everything in between for several years before she was taken at gun point last summer
A family member, Ax, went to see if she was there. He said the site was depressing. It was full of lines of metal shells, most with no wheels, broken windows and some with little or no innards.
At the back of his mind in going to look for the vehicle, apart from the fact that it is “something to do” when daily routines are still restricted, was a potential to get her back “in case we need to run”. But then you are an easier target in car than on foot. Behind this is the reality that although our family are for the most part fine, there is a thin ice feeling.
On the 4th October a friend in El Obeid rang and we were delighted to hear all was well. The next day he rang to say that they had been bombarded with drones. Omderman has also been hit. Nothing is resolved. And South Sudan is still unravelling.
One of the fall-outs of the war coupled with climate change (I think) has been a steep increase in Dengue fever. We also hear disputed reports of cholera outbreaks. Now at the tail-end of the rains is the malaria season
In the end we could not locate our vehicle. We laughed that she was never exactly a get away car, except in the sense that we seemed to get away with paying very little road tax over the years. In this seemingly endless war, the citizens who have lost most of what we think of as essentials are expected to pay significant amounts to reclaim their cars at a time that inflation in the costs of everyday needs, and the continuing devaluation of currency, bites.
Summary: One of these suspects is not like the others …
As aficionados of Rumpole will know, a “cut-throat” trial is one in which co-defendants turn on each other. That is the heart of this novel about three boys accused of murder — a case that also involves a victim nearly decapitated, so there is that sort of throat-cutting too.
This is the first foray into fiction by the Secret Barrister. It is told from multiple perspectives: a defense and the prosecution barrister, the judge, and two of the defendants. Each voice feels distinct, a technical feat that lends the narrative both texture and credibility.
As in their non-fiction, the Secret Barrister’s abiding concerns with the state of the law, society, and the criminal justice system in England and Wales permeate every chapter. Like Wendy Joseph’s Unlawful Killings, it exposes the squalid tragedies of murder committed by children.
Yet for all its artistic achievement and political undercurrent, this is first and foremost a courtroom thriller — and it is a cracking one. It takes a staple of English literature, the red-herring-strewn cosy murder mystery, and serves it up American-hard-boiled. Gone are the familiar comforts of Agatha Christie and the nostalgia-fests of Richard Osman. Instead, we are in a world where the streets are mean, knives wound horrifically, killing is messy, dying is sore, cops and lawyers are flawed, defendants are pathetic, and justice is too often elusive.
By refusing to flinch from the grotesque realities of murder, the Secret Barrister has produced a novel several cuts above much contemporary English crime fiction, and one that, like the best of literature, illuminates the human condition while laying bare some of the failings of our world.
Summary: The UK government’s shenanigans around Palestine Action undermines fundamental principles of rule of law
In 2010, Tom Bingham — former Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice, and Law Lord — demonstrated in his book The Rule of Law that the concept is fundamental to any tolerably functioning democracy. He set out eight principles, including that: • legal rights and liabilities must be determined by law, not the arbitrary discretion of, for example, ministers; • the law must provide effective protection for fundamental human rights; and • the rule of law requires states to comply with their obligations under international law as seriously as domestic ones.
The British government appears to violate all three of these particular principles in its decision to ban Palestine Action and criminalise anti-genocide demonstrators.
To begin at the beginning: there is no agreed definition of terrorism in international law and little academic consensus. The terrorism scholar Alex Schmid once suggested that terrorism might be considered “peacetime equivalents of war crimes.” That deliberately omits atrocities such as Hiroshima, Dresden or Gaza, but it is easy to see why governments responsible for mass civilian killings might resist such a definition that makes them seem at least terrorism adjacent.
In the absence of international agreement, terrorism becomes whatever individual governments decide it is. In the UK, the government has defined it broadly as violence against people and damage to property in pursuit of a political cause. Yet even by that standard, its application is arbitrary. The killing of close to 100,000 civilians by a UK ally is treated as legally too complex for ministers to judge, but the throwing of paint on a weapons system is not. To brand the latter vandalism as “terrorism” is to reduce the definition to a tool of political convenience — a textbook example of arbitrary discretion, and thus a breach of the rule of law.
This arbitrariness also undermines basic human rights protections, most clearly in the assault on the right to peaceful protest. On 6 September 2025, Steve Masters, a British military veteran, was arrested while sitting in his wheelchair in Parliament Square holding a poster. He was one of 890 people detained that day. Their “crime” was not violence, but conscience: holding placards in solidarity with Palestine Action. Farcically, many will be charged with terrorism offences.
Protesters hold up a mirror to the British government, and the government recoils from its reflection. Yet it is only the protesters who offer any hope that the UK might one day be able to face itself with any self-respect, once the atrocities with which it has been complicit have passed.
Summary: First in a series of guest blogs on the war in Sudan, by “Elphaba”
I have been writing family bulletins for myself and anyone ready to read them since the start of the war in Sudan in April 2023. Kind readers have followed events that have driven my family from their homes at gun point from areas around Umderman to Gedarif and Singa. Then again from Singa as they went under siege there.
Before the war, meeting of the Blue and White Niles at Khartoum: many of the buildings in this photo have now been burnt down
In an attempt to spread the burden of too many mouths to feed under one roof and much heart searching they scattered further. Some made the treacherous route to the north only later to face long electricity blackouts in April and May in the hottest time of the year. Others fled Singa on foot eastwards to Gedarif. From there one or two made it to Saudi Arabia where they have safety but at the cost of visa renewals and a deep sense of loss.
Now since the start of this year with relative peace in the Eastern areas of Sudan. For our family, at last, the kids are mostly back at school, the offices working and the economy working on some level. The banks work intermittently and cash is in very short supply. Some can use online banking with an app but for all everyday trading for basic goods, it is only cash. Adding to this, at some point in the year someone thought it a good idea to introduce a new currency and a new layer of potential confusion and corruption. In most of the East only the new currency works, while in the West only the old. In Khartoum and Wad Medani both get used.
With no immediate drama, I worry that we run the risk of joining the world in forgetting that the war and instability is far from over and accepting a new normal that is anything but. Now with the rains falling heavily there is very little seed to plant to benefit because infrastructure is decimated and only very few have any spare funds. And there is drama. For our friends in El Obeid and our once-home Dilling, siege, counter siege and fear have outlasted anything seen in the East and Darfur continues to be another story again. We last heard from close family friends there about a year ago.
As in Israel/Palestine there are huge profits and plans for still greater ones being made by those who would seize power and (ab)use weakness. In Port Sudan there are huge agricultural schemes under discussion not to mention rebuilding contracts and deals with the Gulf. It is mind-numbingly depressing in its logic of winner – eventually- takes all at whatever cost.
Meanwhile, for our family there is the on-going need to claw back dignity and rebuild with the resources we have. The young men – nephews and sons – working for low wages as labourers, drivers and other sorts of fixers send back what they can. They are themselves stranded in nearby countries away from their families and they know that whatever they send it is never enough. We are aware we have more than many and less than others.
I challenge anyone to fault the determination. My elderly sisters-in-law (elderly = 10 years older than me and in their 70s) have returned to their suburb in Umderman. There is no power. They returned to homes totally stripped bare “not even a teaspoon”. The first job for Nxxx was to buy a front gate as that too had been taken. Bottled gas costs 5 times what it did a year ago and anyway the cooker is gone. The widespread gossip that her neighbour’s son – now gone – whom Nxxx had known since childhood orchestrated the theft of her property and many others. And yet after a few days Nxxx at least is back in her house. As Rxxx explained to me from Saudi Arabia, her homesickness palpable: “of course all the family have been amazing. We are lucky. So much luckier than many. But you ache for what is yours, where you are you and where you’re not thought of a ‘a displaced’”
The violence has gone from these neighbourhoods for now and the young men returning have great plans to fix the power. Knowing the place well, I have no idea how they are getting by. I know it will be a profoundly communal endeavour. My 24year old nephew, his own life plans long since on hold returned from Port Sudan to help his father. He says they live on ful and ta’amia because that is made at a local shop where they have fuel. I imagine them all together much of the day to support, chat about possibilities, find workarounds to issues, talk prices and a future. I hope this will help them recover for now from the trauma of recent months/years.
The profound divide emerging in Sudan and the discrimination and racism that underlies the political stories is a worrying strategic trend that most Sudanese don’t have the luxury of considering. Maybe in that there are some universal trends.
Sacre CoeurDarkness to lightEst-ce que je me souviens…?Siene-sideArtist at workNotre Dame dawningPurely historical interestOval room, Bibliothèque nationale de France – Richelieu… am I?
The way across the marshFalling“Sometimes absence is the hardest thing to hide.”Echoes of QuintA storm is coming“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”In case of stormInto the wine dark seaSentinel Impression of sunsetMoonrise Sea of Tranquilty
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