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Love Again
This great TV film told me more than I’d previously known about the life of Philip Larkin. Granted, that I didn’t know anything at all before, aside from one famous line from one of his poems. Outstanding performances from Hugh Bonneville (who seems to be something of a literary actor coupled with his performance in…
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The Way We Live Now
Back in the autumn of 2001, this was the big BBC costume drama, and for reasons I don’t quite recall now, I missed it. It’s been on a couple of times since on UK Drama, and I missed it both times, so I resolved not to do so again. Saturday night saw episodes one and…
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Enduring Love
Enduring Love is the third Ian McEwan novel I’ve read. The first was the very poor Booker winning Amsterdam, which was more of a short story than a novel, and hence exceptionally poor value at 6.99 for 178 pages (of largish type as I recall). None of the characters were particularly likeable, and the whole…
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Armstong’s Nearly There
Well this year’s Tour has been superb, and it was all set up for this afternoon’s time trial with Jan Ullrich chasing a lead of Armstrong of just over 1 minute on Lance Armstrong. Ullrich crashed within the last few KM although he was never likely to take much out of Armstrong. At that point,…
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Gerald Kaufman
I know that they do it on purpose, but today’s Broadcast (no direct link to the story since they’re subscription only) has a piece by Mr Kaufman once again banging on about how the BBC have handled the David Kelly mess badly. His main issue is that the BBC talked about an “intelligence source”, and…
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Football on TV
I must admit to being truly fascinated by the ongoing televised Premiership football wranglings. Here’s where we stand at the moment. The premier league started off by breaking the rights into three groups: The Gold Package of 38 first choice games on Sundays at 4.00pm, The Silver package of 38 games on Mondays at 8.00pm,…
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Reversible Errors
I’ve only ever read one previous Scott Turow novel – Presumed Innocent which of course was made into a Harrison Ford film. I don’t know how many books he’s written since but when this came out in hardback, it seemed to receive good reviews, so I thought I’d give it whirl. I was a little…
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David Kelly Affair Rumbles On
Well Sunday arrives and now it seems that the blame is being placed on the BBC. The only big defence of the BBC I’ve seen was a vehement one from Rod Liddle, ex-Today editor until fairly recently. All this nonsense about sources is pathetic and not worthy of a reply, but it worries me when…
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Le Tour’s Hotting Up
This year’s Tour is excellent. Armstrong is in his expected yellow, but it turns out that Jan Ullrich is second by just 15 seconds and only a week to go. And Alexandre Vinokourov from Kazakhstan is just 3 seconds further behind. Another big day in the Pyranees tomorrow, and there’s another Time Trial, where Ullrich…
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The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
This is another of those books that was sold to me on the cover alone. Actually, it was the title alone that did it. I saw this book all over the place before finally picking it up in a buy 2 get a third free promotion. Anyhow it’s a very entertaining book set in Botswana…
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Vendetta Against Gilligan Turns To Tragedy
Well it looks as though the ridiculous mole-hunting of BBC correspondent Andrew Gilligan’s source within the MOD or Security Services from which he made “sexed up” report claims, has lead to tragedy. David Kelly earlier this week was questioned by the Commons foreign affairs select committee, but whether he was actually Gilligan’s source remains to…
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The British Film Industry – Alexander Walker
Today’s Evening Standard carried a large tribute section to Alexander Walker today. When I got home this evening, I flicked around looking for something to watch and stumbled upon Alex on the BBC Parliament channel. They were showing coverage of the Culture Media and Sport committee from Tuesday 17 June at which Alexander Walker was…
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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