Christopher Brookmyre is frequently compared to Carl Hiasson, Florida’s merchant of the comic-crime caper. The back yard of Jack Parlabane is our own dear rain soaked West of Scotland. He’s an investigative journalist who is not averse to breaking the law for the sake of a good story, and has finally been hoisted on the […]
“With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill,” observed Rob Hall, the leader of a commercial expedition, on his eighth tour of Mount Everest. ”The trick is to get back down alive.” The particular descent ahead of those on the ”hill” on May 10, 1996, resulted in the greatest loss of life
Josephine Cox hails from Blackburn and she has built a career as a highly successful novelist, frequently being cited as one of the top three most borrowed authors from public libraries. In this story from 2012 eight-year-old Casey’s mother Ruth is a cruel woman, with an appetite for other women’s husbands. His father is quiet
At Sunday School in The Channel Isles about 150 years ago I was taught to sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful‘ the opening verse of which is: ‘All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all’. Mrs Phillips, our teacher, didn’t mention the
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard Read More »
This is a thoroughly researched history of the drug trade showing that all the efforts of governments and law enforcement are futile against global trafficking and desperation to escape the nightmare which is human experience. Spanning five centuries and several continents in a sweeping portrait of addiction, The Pursuit of Oblivion (2001) traces the history
The Pursuit of Oblivion by Richard Davenport-Hines Read More »
In 1914 Vera Brittain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Brittain) was 21 years old, and an undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford. This is the memoir of an upper middle class woman who volunteers to become a nurse in World War 1, and finds her attitudes to herself and her society completely changed. Yet this is not just her story. As she herself writes,
Testament of Youth Read More »
Brilliant, witty and zestful memoirs from this writer and TV presenter. Full of acute analyses. Originally published 2001. 560 pages in Picador paperback edition. ISBN 978-0330418812
This is a multi-award winning biography of the poet who voiced the concerns of the Victorian era. Tennyson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennyson) was Poet Laureate for an astonishing 42 years. To go with this, listen to the BBC Radio 4 ‘In Our Time’ 45 minute episode on Tennyson’s great poem In Memoriam. Available from the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0124pnq With
Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart by Robert Bernard Martin Read More »
Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Read More »
