So here we are on the 2nd May 2015. Witness the ludicrous pantomime surrounding the ‘royal’ family. The establishment, and their fawning sycophants, the London media, are in a frenzy. Continuous breathless commentary oozes around a flipping hospital doorway! What has happened? A woman has given birth. It does tend to happen. Over 350,000 babies will […]
Don’t Try This at Home Read More »
Multi-talented Mark Billingham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Billingham#Novels_2, http://www.markbillingham.com/) began attracting admirers for his crime and mystery fiction in the early 2000’s with Sleepyhead (2001), Scaredy Cat (2002) and Lazybones (2003). He has produced a novel a year since that time, as well as writing for TV and being involved in comedy. His latest is Time of Death. The summary
A taste for the lurid, macabre and gruesome is not readily admitted in the Georgian drawing rooms of Lanark. On the outside chance that there is one person harbouring a furtive taste for some of life’s juicier details, let me introduce you to this work of history by Lisa Appignanesi (http://lisaappignanesi.com/), Trials of Passion. The author examines the
Norwegian crime and thriller writer Jo Nesbo (http://jonesbo.com/) will need no introduction to his legions of devoted readers. In this latest thriller, Blood on Snow, we read the tender story of Olav. He is known as an extremely talented “fixer” to a handful of Oslo’s most powerful crime bosses. But Olav is also an unusually complicated fixer. He has
Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species) fell like a nuclear weapon into Victorian consciousness. The implication for many thinking people was that the whole of the living world is engaged in a brutal, pitiless competition for survival. Worse than this realisation is that if Man is co-terminus with the natural world, then we
Does Altruism Exist by David Sloan Wilson Read More »
In comparative mythology, the related motifs of a dying god and of a dying-and-rising god (also known as a death-rebirth-deity) have appeared in diverse cultures. In the more commonly accepted motif of a dying god, the deity goes away and does not return. The motif of a dying-and-rising god refers to a deity which returns, is resurrected
The Myth of the Resurrection by Joseph McCabe Read More »
It’s only in very recent times that people have found it uncomfortable to believe in the reality of The Devil. This is in line with the liberal squeamishness about believing in the reality of Hell. Millions across the globe, though, who do not live near University precincts or live in Georgian town houses, still believe
The Devil: A Biography by Peter Stanford Read More »
Educated at Edinburgh and Oxford, Kate Clanchy (http://literature.britishcouncil.org/kate-clanchy) lived in London’s East End for several years, before moving to Oxfordshire where she now works as a teacher, journalist and freelance writer. Her 2013 novel has a summary as follows. It’s in response to an advertisement that Struan Robertson, a bright orphan, and just seventeen, leaves his dour native
Meeting the English Read More »
Patrick Gale (http://galewarning.org/about-patrick/) based himself in London after graduating from Oxford in 1983, starting out in a bedsit in Notting Hill. Though his website proudly reports that he “has never had a grown-up job”, Gale supported himself while writing his first novels – The Aerodynamics of Pork (1985), Ease (1985) and Kansas in August (1987) –
A Place Called Winter Read More »
