For my money, June is the finest month. The promise of summer flames out, like shining from shook foil (thank you Gerard Manley Hopkins, (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44395) . Before 9.00 am, heat can stack up into a lazy stillness so that one can happily take morning coffee in the back garden. What mostly makes the month such a ravishing […]
Six Facets of Light by Ann Wroe Read More »
Novelist Mark Billingham (https://www.markbillingham.com/) writes crime thrillers. He also works as a television screenwriter and has become a familiar face as an actor and stand up comedian. Billingham created Detective Inspector Tom Thorne for his 2001 debut novel Sleepyhead, where a case of locked-in syndrome reveals the dark depths of a twisted mind, as adept at toying
The idea of some kind of representative democracy has taken root in these damp islands of ours many centuries ago. Arguably, the long struggle against absolute tryranny began with Magna Carta in 1215. Anyone with the faintest understanding of that history is enraged by the complacency of individuals who can’t be bothered to vote. It is
The Romanovs: 1613-1918 Read More »
Artists, writers and musicians have often spoken about being inspired by a ‘muse’. Sometimes this is another human being who brings out something special in their creativity. Sometimes it feels like an invisible force which takes over them and creates through them. In Greek mythology, The Muses were goddesses of poetry, song, music and dance: what
The Naked Muse by Kelley Swain Read More »
Have you ever been in a relationship, or even upgraded the bond into the social institution called marriage? How is it going? Every relationship has a history as it meets inevitable stresses, external and internal. Alain de Botton’s (http://alaindebotton.com/) new novel charts the marriage of Rabih and Kirsten from the first flowering of attraction and the
The Course of Love Read More »
Many philosophers believe that free will is an illusion. It is an extraordinarily powerful illusion, which accounts for the fact that hardly anyone can bear to give it up. Even after being convinced by a series of cogent philosophical arguments, it will seem to a conscious agent that he is making genuine choices at points
Free Will and Consciousness by Gregg Caruso Read More »
Sometimes a new history book receives so many plaudits and commendations from a variety of sources that it would be remiss not to read it. Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads: A New History of the World is one such. It’s a reasonable assessment that Lanark is not the centre of the world. That being granted, has there
Rebecca Mackenzie (http://www.rebeccamackenzie.com/about/) is the daughter of missionaries, growing up in 1980s Bangkok, the Malaysian jungle and the tea hills of southern India. Returning to Scotland she completed her education, and at seventeen moved to London to study Religion, History and Thai at the School of Oriental and African Studies. In a Land of Paper Gods is her debut novel. The summary
In a Land of Paper Gods by Rebecca Mackenzie Read More »
Clive Cussler (http://clive-cussler-books.com/clive-cusslers-biography/) is well loved by his legion of devoted readers. His detective Isaac Bell is back for the ninth time in this new adventure blockbuster. The summary is as follows. It is 1906 and in New York City the Italian crime group known as the Black Hand is on a menacing spree: kidnapping, extortion,
