My first Guardian Weekly lay casually on the dining room table at the Max Planck guesthouse in Tübingen where I was spending a sabbatical. It was a cold, wet, snowy winter in Germany in 1991. Knowing nobody, I had little to occupy my time besides work. My German wasn’t adequate to read the local newspaper, so I opened the Guardian Weekly. As with so many of your readers, an enduring love affair began.
Back in the US, I missed this wonderful, balanced, nuanced view of the world. Although I was born and educated in Ireland and believed that I had a good knowledge of world affairs, the Guardian Weekly introduced me to places and ideas I had never thought about. I have been a subscriber ever since.
On a recent trip to Canada, my sister and I compared our GW reading habits. We both read our weekly issue from back to front. In the past few years we have both begun to enjoy doing the Quick crossword and Sudoku. We love the book reviews, and almost always find something to request at our local libraries, or download for an e-reader. When she was in hospital recently, I read to her from Nature Watch – vivid descriptions of blackberries and mushrooms that filled the air with the promise of recovery.
Even if I am sometimes overwhelmed with the weekly news from around the globe, I always find something to take away and cherish.
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