Writer and documentary filmmaker Agent @MWHamilton
London, England
Joined July 2017
- Tweets33.2K
- Following2.7K
- Followers2.3K
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Yaba Badoe retweeted
Four-year-old Zach is a constituent of mine who is suffering from Stage 4 Neuroblastoma.
His wonderful family, and the campaign Solving Kids’ Cancer UK, are trying to raise £339,000 so that Zach can get the treatment he needs to save his life.
Their campaign has been formidable, and they are well over halfway, but there are only a few days left to reach the goal.
If you are reading this, please consider giving whatever you can.
justgiving.com/campaign/zach
Yaba Badoe retweeted
The proofs for my new middle-grade novel are starting to go out into the world. A Piece of Home will be published by Nosy Crow in March 2027.🎉🎉🎉
@nosycrow
#upcomingnovel
#secondnovel
#apieceofhome
#blackhistorymonth
#march2027
Yaba Badoe retweeted
Hannah Arendt:
"Kötülüğün sıradanlığı canavarlardan gelmez. Düşünmeyi bırakan sıradan insanlardan gelir."
Yaba Badoe retweeted
“The conqueror writes history. They came, they conquered and they wrote. Now you don’t expect people who came to invade us to write the truth about us”
—Miriam Makeba
Yaba Badoe retweeted
A morning in Westminster - gossip is that backbenchers are quite unhappy with the Budget. Complaints that "Andy's been captured by the machine". Cross-party people who had his ear on social justice issues before he became PM now say they can't get near him. Dissent brewing.
Yaba Badoe retweeted
Look, I just want the House, the Senate, some key governors races, and Vladimir Putin falling out of a 5th floor window.
Is that so wrong?
Yaba Badoe retweeted
'What’s the point of cut-price marmalade when a few months ago you promised to nationalise Thames Water?
Why, for that matter, chuck out the old boss when the new one is less ambitious?'
theguardian.com/commentisfre…
Yaba Badoe retweeted
In the ballad The Unquiet Grave, a grieving lover mourns so relentlessly that the dead beloved rises to ask for peace. The tale suggests that excessive sorrow can disturb the dead. Even the grave cannot guarantee rest when the living refuse to release someone. #FolkloreThursday
Art: S. Cunningham
Yaba Badoe retweeted
🎉 We are thrilled that Stations by Louise Kennedy has been shortlisted for Waterstones' Book of the Year! Huge congratulations to Louise!
waterstones.com/category/hig…
Yaba Badoe retweeted
You know, there's an old saying that came to us from the East: “No matter how many times you say "halva, halva," it won't make your mouth any sweeter.”
Well, it's pretty much the same with this demagoguery.
Would you look at that, how on earth did we here in Ukraine never think of it ourselves? Apparently, this war aimed at destroying our country and us as a people, the largest military aggression in Europe since Hitler, ought to be brought to an end. Who would have thought?
But perhaps there's a reason why no “peace settlement” has materialized, just as none has since 2022? Could it be because, in 2022 and throughout the years since, the aggressor has offered Ukraine nothing but total capitulation and national suicide, regardless of the circumstances or the situation on the battlefield, and continues to offer nothing else today? Not after Russia's defeat at Kyiv, not after five years of Russia's complete failure to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield?
And you can go on endlessly pontificating about how courageously Zelensky has led his country in its struggle and how he must now “find the courage” to lead it toward some abstract “settlement” (the specific “terms” of which are conveniently left unmentioned, for obvious reasons).
You can indulge in imaginary abstractions all you like, arguing that one impossible and unrealistic demand for capitulation and national suicide, wrapped in the abstract euphemism of a “peace settlement,” might somehow have been better than the very same demand for Ukrainian capitulation and national suicide, wrapped in the very same euphemism, in 2026.
None of this changes a thing. Nor does it make “peace” with an aggressor, whom just about everyone seems eager to accommodate, any more realistic or any closer.
And part of the reason for this is that some people, in their monumental arrogance, have simply decided, without a shred of evidence, that Putin's defeat is somehow too dangerous and must not be allowed to happen, while the responsibility for peacefully settling a war of aggression must fall on the victim of that very aggression, at the price of its own voluntary capitulation in a war in which the aggressor has failed to defeat it.
thenation.com/article/world/…
Yaba Badoe retweeted
Otherwise, voters will draw the conclusion that this summer’s coup against a recently elected prime minister had no grand motivation apart from saving the skins of Labour MPs and fanning a few egos.
theguardian.com/commentisfre…
Yaba Badoe retweeted
The 2026 Readers' Choice Award Winner for Best Children's Book is...
Running My Own Race by Abena Eyeson
(Nosy Crow)
#TheDBAwards
#thediversebooks
Yaba Badoe retweeted
One Republican up for reelection who would speak with me only on the condition of anonymity, so as not to alienate the president, put it succinctly:
“We may have lost the plot here.” theatlantic.com/politics/202…
Yaba Badoe retweeted
The 2026 Readers' Choice Award Winner for Best YA Book is...
Heartbreaker by Anika Hussain
(Hot Key Books)
Anika has won this award two years in a row!
The YA category sponsored by Hot Key Books
#TheDBAwards
#thediversebooks
Yaba Badoe retweeted
If you need some sunshine and blue sea in your life, go to this sparking @royalacademy show. It spans 80 years of painting the French Riviera, with exciting works from Monet, Bonnard, Matisse (as below) and many more. Plus some revelations such as….1/2
Yaba Badoe retweeted
My ghost story ‘Dr Thrale’s Notebook’ is in #TheWitchingHour – out now in paperback 🕯️
Svalbard, 1927. A young geologist, the midnight sun, and a dead man’s cabin…
It frightened me while I was writing it!
13 tales for Halloween (and Christmas!)
michellepaver.com/the-witchi…
Yaba Badoe retweeted
This is one of the most famous portraits in the world, yet few people know the story of the man in it…
His name was Juan de Pareja, born in southern Spain and of African descent, and for more than twenty years he was enslaved in the studio and household of the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. He worked alongside him day after day, learning everything he could by watching one of the greatest artists who ever lived.
In 1650, while the two of them were in Rome, Velázquez painted his portrait, and he didn’t paint him as a servant. He painted him with all the dignity of a gentleman: proud, steady, looking straight at us. And within months of finishing it, Velázquez gave him the greatest gift one person could give another: he signed the papers that would set Pareja free.
Juan de Pareja went on to build his own career as a painter in Madrid. In 1661, he painted a huge canvas of the Calling of Saint Matthew, now in the Prado, and on the far left he included himself, looking out at us and holding a piece of paper with his own name and the date.
The man who had once been painted by someone else was now signing his own work…
My favorite moment in this whole story came right after the portrait was finished, when Velázquez sent it to his friends in Rome to hear what they thought and Pareja himself was the one who carried it to them, so that suddenly they found themselves looking at two Juan de Parejas side by side, the man and the painting. According to an early account, it was so lifelike that they simply stood there in wonder, “not knowing to whom they should speak or who would answer.”
Yaba Badoe retweeted
Mark Urban @TimesRadio what nonsense on better comms than Starmer .. Burnham has been awful on comms. He’s made Starmer look like a seasoned orator. He talks incoherently and then No 10 have to correct him. There’s a reason why Labour don’t change PM’s @kevingarylarson @LBC
Yaba Badoe retweeted
On this Israeli election day, I’d recommend reading this extraordinary @haaretzcom interview with billionaire Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and once one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest confidants.
One of Lauder’s most striking conclusions: “I realized at the end of the day that Israel really didn't want peace, but they wanted dominance.”
This is coming from someone who helped launch Netanyahu’s political career, introduced him to powerful figures in American politics and media, and secretly negotiated with Hafez al-Assad and Rafik Hariri on his behalf in the late 1990s.
In one of the interview’s biggest revelations, Lauder says Netanyahu agreed to a comprehensive peace deal with Syria and Lebanon, including withdrawal from the Golan Heights, but ultimately refused to sign it for political reasons.
“He chose politics over peace. He put his political future before the deal.”
Now 82, Lauder describes his profound disillusionment with Israel’s direction. After decades of supporting Israeli and Jewish institutions, he has sold his Tel Aviv apartment, given away his Be’er Sheva property, and says he has no intention of returning to Israel.
He warns that Netanyahu’s dependence on figures like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich is damaging Israel, alienating diaspora Jews and eroding support in Washington.
The interview is also full of fascinating details about Lauder’s role in Netanyahu’s political rise. The two became close friends in the 1980s, when Netanyahu was Israel’s ambassador to the UN, speaking almost daily at times.
Lauder says he introduced Netanyahu to speech coach Lilyan Wilder to improve his public speaking and, crucially, to Republican strategist Arthur Finkelstein, who would become instrumental in Netanyahu’s electoral success.
When Netanyahu left New York to pursue a political career in Israel, Lauder threw him a farewell party attended by some of the most influential figures in American media and politics, including Rupert Murdoch and the head of the New York Times.
Lauder recalls opening doors for Netanyahu and helping him cultivate the relationships that would underpin his rise to power.
What makes this interview so revealing is that Lauder is no longtime critic of Israel. He had been a committed Zionist, a Republican power broker, and a man who spent decades financing Jewish institutions, cultivating relationships with Arab leaders, and pursuing diplomatic openings on Israel’s behalf.
A fascinating read 👇
haaretz.com/israel-news/elec…
