Category: Books

Andrew Collins, sometime Eastenders script writer, Back Row presenter, regular contributor to Top Ten xxx and I Love the 19xx, and now Radio Six DJ has written this entertaining memoir of life growing up. Based largely on a diary he kept throughout his childhood, this brings homes the minutiae of toys, comics, TV programmes, music…

This book is subtitled, Fifty years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3. I picked it up cheaply in one of those Soho remaindered bookshops a few weeks ago on the recommendation (well mention really) of a friend. I’ve got to say that it’s a fascinating read about one the cultural aspects of which…

The latest in my reading of the full Graham Greene oeuvre. This novel is about the life of Castle, a middle ranking official working in intelligence within the Foreign Office. There’s a leak within the department, and the devious Dr Percieval is on the case. There’s no major scandal going on – it’s all very…

The latest book I’ve been reading by Murakami, it’s a little different to the previous two that I’ve read. The same themes of loneliness and isolation are there, but this is a slightly more straightforward love story. And although some the behaviour of characters is maybe strange, there’s no supernatural element to it. I thoroughly…

Well I did say after I read Dance Dance Dance, that I was going to read more Haruki Murakami, and this is the next one I picked up. The most recently published paperback volume, it tells the story of a couple who never become lovers but never don’t. I suppose the book enters areas a…

The book chain Ottakers occassionally runs special 99p promotions on novels to introduce you to a new series. So I picked up In A Dry Season by Peter Robinson as a result of one of these promotions. It’s one of a long series of Inspector Banks novels, and very good it was too. I must…

Some years back, back when foreign language films were shown on terrestrial television, there were a couple of series I used to watch religiously. One was Moving Pictures presented by Howard Schuman, and the other was Moviedrome, presented originally by Alex Cox. Now I can’t remember which of these two fine shows it was I…

I picked this up in the Waterstones sale quite cheaply. I quite like John Pilger, but was annoyed with myself when I missed his last TV documentary – a documentary that Michael Green, Chairman of the TV company that made and aired the programme, attacked! The book is in four sections, covering many of the…

I must admit that the only reason I bought this book was because I saw it for just �2.99 last Thursday when I was shopping in Tesco (incidentally, this seems to have been an instore only deal). Well the subject matter interested me – an Englishman making a Bollywood epic, and it was serialised on…

Well I did promise myself that I’d read more, or indeed all, of Graham Greene’s oeuvre this year. Stamboul Train is one his earlier works – 1932 off the top of my head – and takes an interesting third person stance, following the fortunes of a number of passengers aboard the Orient Express. Not quite…

The latest in the Kurt Wallender series by Henning Mankell was recently published in English in the UK, and I love these books. The trouble is that I came to them late, and was able to lap them up until now. They were published out of sequence, but we’re back on track, but sadly some…

I promised recently that I was going to read more Graham Greene, so this was the obvious next title. Obvious, because I managed to not get around to reading it before visiting Cuba last year. Reading it, I found it very familiar but from long enough ago, that I’d forgotten the ending. Later, on returning…