On spending a day recently reading one of Saturday’s national newspapers, I was overwhelmingly struck by how at both national and international levels – across all public and private organisations – everybody is struggling with truth and how to find it. The Wikileaks phenomenon provides a startling reaction to the publication of truth and – even though intuitively people know the truth sets one and potentially others free – the efforts to ‘shoot the messenger’ have been frightening. The originator of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has received numerous death threats and has gone into hiding. US Internet providers ditched the site in the space of two days. The French Government attempted to ban French servers from hosting the trove of leaked data.

If a week in politics is a long time, ten years of writing a weekly column is an eternity! Not that I’m complaining; on the contrary I enjoy writing; it focuses my attention and provides me with the opportunity to examine closely the chosen topic and, most of all, it challenges me to reflect on where I am in myself, towards others, in my work and towards the environment. When the editor informed me of the supplement’s upcoming 10th anniversary and requested I write on something that would mirror the celebration, what sprung to mind was ‘what are the ten personal truths that have influenced my living and writing over the last decade? When I reflected on the question a lot more than ten truths presented themselves so what I decided to do was choose the ten that have had the most influence:

In one way or another I have written on each of the above truths.

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