The Escape Artist

// July 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Book Reviews

Over the last couple of months I have spent a great many hours sat in front of my monitor while constructing a new public health website for the NHS. The considerable amount of screen time necessary has reduced to nil any desire I could possibly have to spend more time clacking out a piece of writing for my own website. That said, I was moved enough by reading Matt Seaton‘s excellent The Escape Artist (Fourth Estate 2003) to put aside some time today to rectify that.
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The Truth That Sticks: New Labour’s Breach of Trust

// March 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // Book Reviews

Martin Bell OBE is perhaps still best known in this country as the “man in the white suit” who ousted the Conservative MP, Neil Hamilton, from the Tatton constituency in the 1997 general election. Hamilton was, at the time, memorably embroiled in sleaze allegations during the cash-for-questions affair. Prior to his time as an independent MP, Bell had been a war correspondent for the BBC for more than 30 years, making his name with reports from conflicts in Vietnam, Angola, Northern Ireland and Bosnia among others. He now acts as a UNICEF ambassador.
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On Chesil Beach

// July 14th, 2008 // No Comments » // Book Reviews

This short (166 pages) but beautifully paced novel is easily read in two or three sittings but only the meanest of critics will feel short changed as a result of this brevity. It essentially tells the story of a wedding night which goes catastrophically and messily astray. Ian McEwan has a great talent for tight examination of seminal moments in his characters’ lives which alter irrevocably the entire course of their futures. Readers of his previous work such as Atonement or Enduring Love will know that already but here too is the undercurrent of unease which darkens other McEwan books such as Black Dogs or The Comfort of Strangers.
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The God Delusion

// June 9th, 2008 // No Comments » // Book Reviews

I have wanted to write about my experiences of reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006), and the discussions with friends which followed, for some time. Dawkins hopes that people who perhaps haven’t thought seriously about religion or the existence of God, those who are “sitting on the fence” on the subject, may be encouraged to do so after reading his book. What surprised me most during discussions between my friends and I on the subject was the fact that it seemed impossible to have a dispassionate yet serious conversation about religion with anyone, regardless of their religiosity or lack thereof.
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Better a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

// May 23rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Book Reviews

I’ve just heard that one of my all time musical heroes … no scratch that … all time heroes period, Tom Waits, is to play the Edinburgh Playhouse at the end of July. He’s going to be there on both the 27th and 28th and these are his only UK shows. I’m expecting a bit of a fight to get hold of tickets but I’m in tenacious mood.

As it happens, I have just finished reading Innocent When You Dream (Tom Waits: The Collected Interviews) edited by Mac Montandon and thought I might chew the fat a little about it and about my long time admiration for Waits. I received the book as a Christmas present from my good friend Dave Scott who shares with me both a great appreciation of Tom Waits’s music and a comfortable relationship with the Waitsian world. It has proved to be a wise choice of gift and the book gives the reader a good insight into the head of this enigmatic and prolific artist, even though whatever Waits tells you about himself may or may not have any truth to it. “I’m going to pull your string from time to time” he tells the interviewer from Playboy magazine at the start of their 1988 conversation in a seedy downtown L.A. cafe.
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