celticman's blog

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0032lrl/bel I hadn’t heard of Bel (Beldina Odenyo) the Scots-Kenyan who performed under the title Heir of the Cursed. There’s no reason why I should. I don’t listen to music. Bel is hailed as a generational talent, in much the same way, and for many of the same reasons as Amy Winehouse. Black and white. Defiance, anger and fear. A small presence in a small body with a big voice that demands to be heard. Bel...

I was a big fan of Maggie O’Farrell’s autobiographical writing, I Am, I Am, I Am . Yet I couldn’t stomach more than a few pages of her multi-award winning bestseller—and soon to be adapted as a film— Hamnet. Land rekindled my love affair with O’Farrell’s writing. Epic is usually associated with books over 400 pages. Boring is another. But O’Farrell squeezing so much into such little space, the Irish Famine ( An Gorta Mór ) and its ripple effects...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p09fs2x4/time-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0g5k1zt/time-series-2-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00316gl/time-series-3-episode-1 Jimmy McGovern is a writer. Helen Black and Samuel Bailey are writers too. But if Black and Bailey had approached the BBC with an idea about a drama series focusing on life inside a men’s, women’s and young offender’s institution with...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00327nr/the-substance I don’t know if there is a word ‘hokumy’ but somehow watchable? Algorithms are pushers. You’ll end up bleeding from the nose like a writer/director on a cocaine binge or Sue (Margaret Qualley) after watching The Substance . Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) plays an aging Hollywood actress and fitness guru that had me thinking that looks like Demi Moore, but I’d never seen her in those...

Heroes can be as boring as superheroes. There have been a slew of programmes with names like Who Dares Wins? Some recount the lost glory of figures that fought and never foundered during the early days of the second world war. Men a bit apart from the ordinary soldier. That’s Jason (Foxy) Fox. Joined the marines at the impossibly young age of sixteen and soldering was his life. The army was always there for him. And he was a natural leader with...

Pierre Lemaitre writes block-busting novels with larger-than-life characters and elaborate plots that rise and fall in the right places. All Human Wisdom is a block-busting 417 pages. And he deals with big themes. Here it’s the interwar years of great poverty and great wealth in France and other European countries. Hitler is on the steps of the Reichstag. Bankers and industrialists know which way the wind is blowing. Lemaitre’s novels start with...

Geraldine Brooks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. Horse is Lexington (Darley) was called the greatest American thoroughbred racehorse of the 19th century and champion shagger. It covered a record number of mares and produced a record number of champion-winning racehorses. I’m sure you get the picture. Theo stumbles upon a picture of Lexington by accident. An elderly neighbour is leaving junk outside her house after her husband died. A sign...

I’ve never met Ian Rankin. Not even on the page. He announced to the world he’s thinking of retiring from writing. I don’t need to make such pronouncements. He’s ‘the iconic number one bestseller.’ ‘A genius’ according to Lee Child. ‘A Master,’ according to the Guardian. Midnight and Blue you’d expect to be a knockout. ‘The new John Rebus thriller’ (well, since adding to his back catalogue of 24 Rebus novels and two short-story collections and a...

Sebastian Mallaby (2026) The Infinity Machine. Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the Quest for SuperIntelligence. I thought this almost 400 page book would be a bit of slog. But it reads like a thriller. I loved it. Bill Gates recommends you read it too. Demis Hassabis. You know the type. Genius son of poor immigrants (boat people) who sets out to change the world… Notes . https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm5y5nynl75ko Open AI scraps new model...

Colin Walsh’s Kala is hell of a debut novel, an international bestseller. It’s rarely I’m blindsided by whodunnit as I was here. But Kala is more than a murder-mystery set in the small fictional town of Kinlough . It’s a propping up and tearing down of what it is to by young and full of love and teenage sparring and bullshit in the endless summer of 2003, when everything is up for grabs and Kala Lanann couldn’t be more perfect, and she’s the...