travellers
Travellers’ tales
In the absence of their own written records, they have been ‘invented’ and misrepresented in Europe ever since their arrival in the Middle Ages, says Klaus-Michael Bogdal
Pikey
A policeman sent a colleague who was house-sitting for him a WhatsApp message: ‘Keep the pikeys out.’ He was sacked…
Real life
Exciting news from my father’s cousin in Canada. ‘You asked about our grandfather, there is much to tell,’ he writes.…
Why do we envy nomads but treat Travellers so badly?
Oh for the open road! Who doesn’t want to abandon the suffocating suburbs – waking to an alarm at the…
The scholar and the gypsy
Naomi Ishiguro began writing Common Groundin the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. The title refers to both Goshawk Common in…
Travel ban
Why Pontins thinks I’m an ‘undesirable guest’
The travellers could teach the locals a thing or two about being responsible citizens
The travellers were blamed for fly-tipping when all that was left on the common after they went back up north…
What do we call the people who abducted Maria? It’s a minefield
How should we describe the people who allegedly abducted that little girl in Greece, after a neighbour claimed that they…
Real life
Walking the spaniel on Tooting Common, I was apprehended by a man on a bike. He was ashen-faced. His young…
