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Golden Dagger Ban
Just after Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason won the Golden Dagger from the British Crimewriters’ Association, they ban foreign language titles. The rumour, according to The Guardian’s Bookseller diary, it’s down to the award’s sponsor next year not wanting to promote obscure Scandinavian authors when there are lots of British and American authors to plug. The…
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Airline Style Security Checks At Stations
The Heathrow Express is both a good and a bad thing. Bad, simply because it’s expensive. Good, because it gets you very rapidly from central London (well Paddington) to Heathrow. But with security checks in place it’s going to take a bit longer to reach Heathrow, and some of the speed advantage of the system…
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Messy Shops
I know that there has been an economic downturn, and high street chains are finding it hard to maintain profits and growth, but is that really an excuse for how busy and messy all these stores now look. WH Smith has had some notable problems of late, and for a while was torn over exactly…
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Great Big Bid
So exactly who’s idea was it to essentially put on national television, the kind of charity auction that normally happens at expensive balls? Is it really entertaining to watch people who evidently have far too much money spending the equivalent of several salaries on various prizes? There’s something obscene about seeing these disinterested people sitting…
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Least Likely Statistic of the Week
According to a report from Continental Research, as published in Campaign magazine, one in ten adults watches television on the internet. Really? Already? Maybe “has watched”, but “watches” implies they do it regularly. Unless you want to catch up on last night’s Newsnight, or are engaged in downloading via bittorrent (both reasonably marginal activities still),…
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“Not In My Name”
On Tuesday, The Sun ran a front page showing the picture of a bloodied bomb victim from the July London bombings alongside the headline: “Terror Laws: Tell Tony He’s Right”. Except that the man who appeared on that cover, bloody and bandaged is one John Tulloch. And those certainly aren’t his words or feelings. Read…
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T.E. Lawrence
At the weekend I went to a great new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum about Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence was a great Arabist, and I must admit that one of the books I’ve not read, but really wish I had, is Seven Pillars of Wisdom – don’t worry, I intend to put this right.…
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Neil Gaiman
Last night I joined many others to see Lenny Henry in conversation with Neil Gaiman. A very entertaining evening it was too even if I didn’t stay around to join an enormous queue and get a book signed. Here’s what Gaiman himself says about the evening (with links on from there).
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Evolution
51% of Americans don’t believe in evolution. I wonder how many don’t believe in gravity, or maybe eschew the idea that the earth travels around the sun? In the meantime, a trial reaches its conclusion.
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Jordan Bomb
Whilst not in any way wanting to belittle the tragic loss of life in hotels across Amman, Jordan tonight, I’ve got to feel sorry for the BBC’s Caroline Hawley. Fresh from the nervousness of Baghdad, she ends up in one of the bombed hotels in Jordan – hitherto relatively safe.
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Blair Loses Vote
Wow. Blair’s lost the vote in the Commons today regarding the 90 day detention. Thank goodness that enough Labour MPs saw sense in this. The 28 day vote’s forthcoming. [UPDATE] The 28 day vote has been passed. Of course this is still up from 14 days. I’m sure that this’ll still give the police plenty…
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HDTV
The BBC has announced its HDTV trial plans, with highlights of the main channel’s output available on satellite and cable. This’ll mean the timing should conincide quite nicely with Sky’s expected HDTV push around the same time. Interestingly the Beeb are also going to trial HDTV via Freeview in London where there are seemingly unused…
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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