RIP Roger
The film critic Roger Ebert died earlier this month. Like many people I would seek out his reviews before watching a film. Often I wouldn’t watch films he didn’t rate. I gave him this power…
If nobody speaks of remarkable things
The first two reviews on Amazon’s page for If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor are remarkable. The first is entitled “Extraordinary” and describes a street scene in single northern town on a single day “observing but…
“It doesn’t worry you about money at the moment when you’re least capable of doing anything about it”
Some wisdom from a discredited article that ought to give those who would replace the National Health Service with an insurance scheme something to think about: One of the chief virtues of the NHS has become plainer to me…
“To be the kind of newspaper writer who doctors fiction until it sounds like fact is to work a confidence trick.”
To be the kind of newspaper writer who doctors fiction until it sounds like fact is to work a confidence trick. Clive James, 2012 Clive James is not yet knocking on death’s door, although if…
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
John Betjemen published Slough in 1937. The horror he felt about the newly paved and populated countryside is the horror we feel today, restricting development and enforcing green belts, but we accept Slough now. The repulsion…
Henry Williamson spent years crawling around Dartmoor
According to Robert McFarlane, Henry Williamson spent years crawling around Dartmoor trying to get an “otter’s eye view” of the landscape. Then he wrote Tarka the Otter: He wrote afterwards that every word of that slender…
Isaac Asimov, it wasn’t like this in your day
Just finished Sarah K Castle’s novelette, The Mutant Stag at Horn Creek, published in Analog. It’s the third story in a double edition of the magazine and I enjoyed it despite wild coincidences and, I suspect, suspect…
Companies must invest for us to prosper
Stephen Tall rises above the political babble to undermine five myths about the UK economy: Public spending is not falling Public debt is not falling Looser fiscal policy advocated by Labour would not have produced appreciably…
Roland de Gustibus is a pseudonym
The objective of this blog is to get me thinking the unthinkable, and writing more freely. I think I’ll do that better under the guise of a pseudonym.