In Praise of Gyles Brandreth
A review of Odd Boy Out by Gyles Brandreth and some thoughts on why I like and admire “the Marmite of light entertainment”.
Books, TV and Films, February 2022
7 February I have always been an occasional reader of historical fiction, though it hasn’t been a conscious choice until quite recently. I just seemed to naturally gravitate towards books that were set in the past. Does Sebastian Faulks write historical fiction? I don’t…
Books, TV and Films, January 2022
Back to the wonderful world of historical fiction to welcome in the new year. I discovered Andrew Taylor last summer. His The Last Protector, set in Restoration England, is from his Marwood and Lovett series (I also now have The Ashes of London, the first of them). Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, the final part of her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, still awaits, and her 800-page A Place of Greater Safety, set during the French Revolution, is also on this year’s reading list. The wonderful Kate Mosse also has her latest paperback out later this month, I think, the sequel to The Burning Chambers.
Books, TV and Films, December 2021
My Inspector Rebus reading journey has arrived at The Hanging Garden, originally published in 1998. The main plot line concerns an ugly turf war between rival gangsters. Hello again, ‘Big Ger’. One of the great things about following the Rebus trail is the cast of recurring characters. Big Ger is still doing time and his ascendancy is threatened by the not-at-all-pleasant Tommy Telford. Rankin takes us to even uglier places than usual (and not in a sightseeing sense) and the book doesn’t pull its punches in its portrayal of graphic violence, including the torture of Rebus himself. There is also a nice Brian de Palma, Untouchables-esque set piece involving a planned armed raid on a top-secret pharmaceutical factory.
Books, TV and Films, November 2021
Steve Hackett played guitar in the ‘classic’ Genesis line-up of the Seventies, of course. These days I count myself as a huge fan of his solo work too. I bought his (excellent) third album, Spectral Mornings, way back when it was first released in 1979, having been enchanted by the song Every Day. But I have only really got to know his solo stuff in the last few years, taking a chance on a 2017 album, The Night Siren, after which I picked up a cheap collection of five of his mid-career releases. His recent output — in terms of both quantity and quality — is phenomenal. In fact, unlike most late-in-their-career artists, he is currently producing the best music of his life.
Books, TV and Films, October 2021
From the Queen of Detective Fiction (Agatha Christie, as sort of described by AJP Taylor) to the latest pretender to the crime-writing throne — Richard Osman, sales of whose debut novel, The Thursday Murder Club, have been sensational.
I am not normally a fan of ‘celebrity’ writers — or indeed celebrity anything else. Football managers, for example. There’s more than a whiff of unfairness in the air, a sense that their name brings with it massive advantages not available to ‘ordinary’ folk who may well be toiling in the background unnoticed for years and hoping against hope for a lucky break. However, I was intrigued after reading an interview with Osman in the Guardian to promote his follow-up. And besides, there are some great puff quotes on the cover.
Books, TV and Films, September 2021
3 September As I become more and more disillusioned with day-to-day politics — whether it is the rigidity and staleness of politicians constantly reciting ‘the party line’ or the rise of political lying as an art form and the failure of both parliament and…
Books, TV and Films, June 2021
If Carlsberg did books, they would probably publish something like Tom Holland’s Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. This is a BIG book — big in scale and scope, big in ambition, big in subject matter. In lager terms, much more of a flagon than a pint…
Books, TV and Films, May 2021
Thoughts on Volume II of Isaac Deutscher’s biography of Trotsky, another Rebus novel and The Wind in the Willows; also the films Ray & Liz and Rambo: Last Blood; and the TV dramas Too Close and Innocent.
Books, TV and Films, April 2021
3 April I avoid opening Amazon’s emails telling me what their omniscient algorithms think I should be buying and I never even look at the latest fiction and non-fiction charts so, other than skimming the Guardian’s Review magazine on Saturdays, I am always rather…
Books, TV and Films, March 2021
1 March Having just watched the recent Elisabeth Moss film The Invisible Man, I am reading the original novel, written by HG Wells and published in 1897, the same year as Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I have never been scientifically minded but two film adaptations…
Books, TV and Films, February 2021
1 February Age of Empire 1875–1914 is the final part of Eric Hobsbawm’s trilogy about what he called ‘the long nineteenth century’, beginning with the French Revolution in 1789 and ending with the outbreak of war in 1914. I bought this book at university…
Books, TV and Films, January 2021
2 January A fantastic way to kick off the new year — Bring Up the Bodies, the second volume of Hilary Mantel’s fictional account of the later life of Thomas Cromwell, the architect of much that went on in the name of Henry VIII…
Books, TV and Films, November 2020
1 November With a due sense of dread I have started to read Bohemian Rhapsody: The Definitive Biography of Freddie Mercury by Lesley-Ann Jones. I generally avoid the ‘popular’ biography genre — books about celebrities written for a mass-market audience. From the few I…
Books, TV and Films, September 2020
2 September I re-watched The Ninth Gate, having referred to it in my recent Dennis Wheatley blog. Considering that it is directed by Roman Polanski — highly renowned, if controversial for non-film reasons; my favourite film of his is The Pianist — it plods…
Books, TV and Films, August 2020
1 August With the football season at an end, there’s time to try out a classic film that I have never actually seen before — Ice Station Zebra — ‘classic’ in the very loose sense of a film with an all-star cast that turns…
Books, TV and Films, May 2020
Wednesday 6 May I finished two things today: Homeland on Channel 4 and the Rudolf Hess biography, Hess: The Führer’s Disciple. I stayed up late to watch the final episodes of the final series of Homeland. Eight series in total — and what fantastic…
Books, TV and Films, April 2020
6 April John Barton’s A History of the Bible: The Book and Its faith is proving an absolute treat. My interest in religion and belief systems has developed over the last decade or so, triggered — does this count as irony? — by reading…
Books, TV and Films, January 2020
1 January New year — new decade — new resolution … a reading log or diary. Let’s see how this goes. Also thinking of setting myself a target of a book every ten days, equating to 36 books over the year. That means reading…