celticman's blog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Betrayal_(Dunmore_novel) Leningrad 1952/53. Stalin has god-like powers. His paranoia has shaped a super-power in which the greater good is defined by the fear of that knock at the door. No one is safe. Volkov is a fictional character. He has the appellation THE attached to his name in whispers. THE Volkov. To show there’s no misunderstanding. It’s really him. With the fear and state-sponsored terror he brings...

Maya Angelou’s front-cover endorsement of Women Who Run With the Wolves is one of the most famous blurbs in publishing history. ‘Everyone who can read should read this book.’ I can read and I read the book. Around 2.7 million copies sold. But one of those best-selling books I’d never heard of. I’m not sure why. Probably because I’m a guy. ‘Stories are medicine.’ Strong medicine. Healing medicine. Clarissa Pinkola Estés is a cantadora (a keeper...

Andrew G.Ralston is hooking a ride on one of Scottish television’s most successful cop shows: Taggart . There’s a big kick and lick of the McIlvanney and Laidlaw on which Taggart is based, the idea of the outsider and insider that contacts investigations in his own way—and comes up trumps every time. Everyone in Glasgow was an extra in Taggart. I got paid for it, so I saw lead actor Mick McManus in action, but I was more interested in the free...

‘Only a fool thinks that women love differently.’ So says a character in one of her short-stories. ‘Fools and pedagogues.’ Saints and Sinners, take your pick. Edna O’Brien offers all of these things and none, because women’s treachery is different to men’s? ‘Rafferty’, the opening story in the collection. An Irish man in London. He’s been in the English capital all of his working life and now retired longs to return the auld country. He’s loved...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002v48h/to-think-like-a-killer-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002vd9y/to-think-like-a-killer-series-1-episode-2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002vdb0/to-think-like-a-killer-series-1-episode-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind:_To_Think_Like_a_Killer When Ann Burgess left school in 1957, former General and war hero, Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the richest...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002tb7c/brother https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_(2022_film) Brother is one of those films I know I’m going to like right from the get-go. I haven’t read the book. And I’m a bit thick. Even after the film ended I wasn’t quite sure how to place the music (hip-hop) and what part of America this acclaimed Canadian drama was set in the 1990s (Scarborough, Toronto). My sister lives in Canada in one of those...

Man of Bones is the third in the murder-mystery series featuring Revol Rossel. Setting is everything. It returns to the bleak, frozen landscape of Leningrad, winter 1953. Lowly militiaman Rossel has miraculously survived the NKVD and being part of a punishment battalion during the siege of Leningrad and following The Great Patriotic war, (Soviet casualties around 20 million), been deported to Siberia, which is a death sentence in all but name,...

A Traitor’s Heart is the second in a trilogy of books featuring Revol Rossel, a former militia lieutenant in Stalinist Leningrad. His nemesis, Major Nitkin, who literally cut short his career as a prodigiously talented violinist in the Leningrad Conservatory by cutting off two of his fingers and mutilating others, but also has the top-level connections in the Kremlin to protect him. At the beginning of the A Traitor’s Heart , Rossel is so far...

Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Show, BBC iPlayer, directed by Jessica Dimmock, https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rvt0/captive-audience-a-real-american-horror-story-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rvt1/captive-audience-a-real-american-horror-story-series-1-episode-2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rvt3/captive-audience-a-real-american-horror-story-series-1-episode-3 Wikipedia ‘My father was...

‘The word paranaza comes from the sea’. Learning the trade. In Neapolitan dialect, paranza originally refers to a small fishing boat. Very young boys as crew, who go out at night with bright lamps to lure fish to the surface and catch them quickly. The small stuff in the bottom of the nets is thrown together and cooked in a local much- loved and cheap dish. Little fisherman become big fisherman by staying close to the shore. They are both...