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Restless
William Boyd is always worth reading, and this novel has done especially well. It’s probably selling more than all his previous novels combined by virtue of it being on the Richard & Judy list. It was also shortlisted for the Costa Coffee Book Prize. And you know what? It’s really good. It’s basically a spy…
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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Catching up with a few recent books still. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was the Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago – you can’t miss the sticker on the cover telling you as much. The author, Paul Torday, also popped up on the Simon Mayo book segment a couple of…
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Blue Shoes and Happiness
I read something recently that suggested that Alexander McCall Smith is able to knock out another No.1 Ladies Detective Agency novel in a fortnight or so. That’s probably not quite the case, but he certainly is a one-man publishing phenomenon putting the likes of Terry Pratchett (in his prime) in his place. As well as…
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Music in the Co-op
So I popped around to my local Co-op to pick up a few essentials after work. Outside, a single unseen tinny loudspeaker was blaring out classical music. Very strange. I looked up, and thought that perhaps someone in a flat above was enjoying the music. Then I found out what was really going on. It…
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Banned Books
And speaking of The Independent – it has a new promotion running on Saturdays called “Banned Books.” Each week you can buy one of “25 cutting-edge titles, censored classics and literary landmarks” for £3.49 with your Saturday Independent (at selected stores). They gave away the first in the series, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess,…
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Quiz TV Again
A great piece by Janine Gibson in the Mediaguardian blog referring in particular to a Daily Mirror piece (scroll down). I wholeheartedly agree with it all.
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Weekend Trips with The Independent
Everyday The Independent shouts its environmental credentials, taking a sometimes very contrary view over what should be that day’s headlines. I think their shouty issue-led headlines actually wear the reader out over time and they should be used a bit more sparingly, but it’s fair enough that they bang their drum about what we’re doing…
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Carling Cup Final
Up bright and early to head off to Cardiff to see Arsenal v Chelsea in the Carling Cup Final at the Millennium Stadium. The traffic was awful, and it took far longer to get there than it did a few years back when we drove up for the FA Cup Final (also against Chelsea). Leaving…
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Boeing Boeing
Boeing Boeing is a new production of a French farce dating from the sixties (and filmed a couple of times). Bernard (Roger Allam) lives in a Parisian apartment, and at the play’s start we meet him with glamourous TWA air stewardess Gloria (Tamsin Outhwaite). But he has a secret. Aided and abetted by his world…
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London in Maps
I must admit that I’m complete sucker for maps. When in another city, the first thing I want to get hold of is a map. So I finally got around to going to the British Library’s London in Maps exhibition this weekend. It’s an exhibition detailing the evolution of London maps from the earliest examples,…
Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Yellowface/All The Lovers In The Night
Yellowface by R F Kuang I first came across R F Kuang with last year’s very enjoyable Babel, an alternate history of the British Empire told in a world where magic exists and is controlled by an elite group of individuals. Yellowface is very different, but no less enjoyable. It’s a book about books, and…
Hadrian’s Wall
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