If you’re like me, most of what you know about ancient Rome comes from repeated viewings of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Maybe even seeing Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus. I never received a “classical” education when I grew…Read more…
At Karl Marx’s grave
Last weekend, as part of our wedding celebration, we invited guests from all over the world to come to Highgate Cemetery and to visit the grave of Karl Marx. (Doesn’t everyone do this?). Here is…Read more…
Review: Where All Good Flappers Go – Essential Stories of the Jazz Age, Selected and Introduced by David M. Earle
This a wonderful book. No, really. I was a bit concerned as I don’t always enjoy anthologies, and the only author names I recognised were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzerald, and Dorothy Parker. But that…Read more…
Ukraine can still win this war
For some time now, the consensus in the mainstream media in Britain and elsewhere has been that Ukraine has effectively lost the war with Russia. Slowly and methodically, Russian troops have taken village after village…Read more…
Review: The Eagle Has Landed, by Jack Higgins
I recently saw (again) the film, starring Michael Caine and the late Donald Sutherland, and this awakened in me an interest in reading the original book. There were a couple of pleasant surprises. For one…Read more…
Review: Active Measures – The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare, by Thomas Rid
This thoroughly-researched, engaging book is full of stories that I didn’t know, showing the vast extent of disinformation campaigns over the last century or so — and not only done by the Russians. Rid has…Read more…
Review: The Giving Code – How charities can increase their unrestricted income, by Rachel Collinson
Rachel Collinson knows a lot about how non-profit organisations and charities can improve their fundraising and campaigning — but she only shares some of it in this short book. This is understandable because she earns…Read more…
Review: ‘Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King
This is an early book by Stephen King and when I read that it was his take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I thought — why not? But it’s not King’s best effort (he improved as…Read more…
Serbia: Stop union-busting at Yura
At first glance, Serbia seems like a great place for trade unions. Under the country’s labour law, a union need only sign up 15% of the workforce in order to compell employers to bargain collectively….Read more…
Review: Why We Read – 70 Writers on Non-Fiction, edited by Josephine Greywoode
This very short book has some real gems in it. Some quite famous authors and historians explain not only why they read but also why they buy books, and why they write. And while so…Read more…
Review: Autocracy, Inc. – The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, by Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum is a first-rate historian, a very good writer and a campaigner for human rights and democracy. And this is a very good and important book. But — while its description of the evils…Read more…
Review: Dead Fall, by A.K. Turner
This book, the 4th in the Cassie Raven series, is as good as the others, which is saying a lot. Cassie is a twenty-something mortuary technician in Camden, a neighbourhood in north London. Her “special…Read more…
Review: The Warlock Effect, by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman
This book combines two things that I enjoy reading about very much: magic and espionage. And it does a good job with both — especially the magic. (One of the authors worked closely with Derren…Read more…
Did Labour win?
American astronauts did not set foot on the Moon in July 1969. In 2001, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were brought down by a controlled explosion, and not…Read more…
Review: Esperanto and Its Rivals – The Struggle for an International Language, by Roberto Garvía
In this well-written and fascinating short book, Roberto Garvía focusses almost entirely on Esperanto’s rivals among the other “international auxiliary languages”. There are two of these that matter Volapük and Ido, both long-forgotten except by…Read more…
Review: You Like It Darker, by Stephen King
Stephen King is a superb writer of short stories, even if he is better known as a novelist. And to call all the stories in this hefty, nearly 500 page book, “short” stories is a…Read more…
Review: How Not to Write a Novel, by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark
A clever and witty book filled with examples of things NOT to do if you’re writing your first novel. And while the authors insist that unlike other writing books, they are telling you about sure-fire…Read more…
Review: The Wrong Hands, by Mark Billingham
This, the second book in Mark Billingham’s new Blackpool-based crime series, continues an unbroken trend of superb story-telling, mixed with humour and characters you actually care about. DS Declan Miller sounds at first like a…Read more…
Trump and the Teamsters
Last week Donald Trump made an extraordinary announcement on his Truth Social platform. Trump was announced that Sean O’Brien, president of the 1.3 million member Teamsters union, had agreed to address the Republic National Convention…Read more…
Review: Jack and Jill, by James Patterson
The third book in the long-running Alex Cross series seems a good place to take a break. While the story has a good beginning, by the end it becomes an excuse for the author to…Read more…