Tonight (Sunday 4th September 2016) sees the screening of the second series of the newly made Poldark historical drama on BBC TV. Many of us will remember the 29 episode TV adaptation with Robin Ellis and Angharad Rees which ran from 1975-1977. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075560/?ref_=nv_sr_2) Forty years on, and it’s Aidan Turner and Eleanor Tomlinson who are

Commuters in Clydesdale could be forgiven for thinking that the train service has gone a belly up in the last 18 months. Cancellations and delays have plagued the daily journey. If one is lucky, a seat and the opportunity to read a newspaper or novel whilst being conveyed to work are on offer. What one

Racial tensions in America have not gone away 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Civil_Rights_Movement_(1954%E2%80%9368)), and there is much talk in the media and among pundits about the enduring legacy of slavery. The 2013 film 12 Years a Slave (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2024544/?ref_=nv_sr_2) was an adaptation of the 1853 slave narrative memoir by Solomon Northup, a New York State-born free African-American man who

Novelist Susan Barker (http://susanbarker.co.uk/about/) has gained an appreciative readership over the last 10 years. Her third novel is about a taxi driver in contemporary Beijing and is interwoven with tales from the Tang Dynasty, the invasion of Genghis Khan, the Ming Dynasty, the Opium Wars, and the Cultural Revolution. Whilst writing The Incarnations Barker spent several years

Navigating through human life is, as we all realise, a tricky business. One of the persistent suspicions that may beset us is that people are not all they seem. They may be offering us a persona which conceals hidden motives, desires, tastes, values etc. How well do you really know those that are closest to