celticman's blog

Marina H. Smith in the Introduction to the 46 Jews published here, who survived the Holocaust, tells the reader: ‘Every life is different. Every story is different too.’ That is true of us all, but there is a pattern of before and after. The survivors are young, middle or upper-class adolescents, some of them younger children, when the Nazis came to power and swept through Europe, when transport to the East meant certain death in Concentration...

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/wasting-away-the-truth-about-anorexia My mind went blank and I started to type Alzheimer’s into the search box of Channel 4’s programmes. In a way that’s instructive. You can just start again, wipe out what went before and retype. We are learning about Alzheimer’s. I can throw in phrases like amyloid plaque. Perhaps do a simple drawing of what it means in a cave of dendrites. But I don’t really know what it...

Iain Banks (1985) The Wasp Factory. I’ve read this book before and after reading it again I kinda remembered what happened in the end. But I didn’t appreciate it as a work of genius, the kind of thing I’d like to write, as I do now. Perhaps in the week that Philippa Gregory took time out slate other writers and make it clear she sees herself as the big I AM ( https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/aug/14/philippa-gregory-lazy-and-...

I bought this book for one pence on Amazon. I think it’s overpriced, but I don’t want my money back. The dedication in the book is to Bryan Moyne and Diana Mosley. I don’t know who Bryan is, but Diana, friend of Hitler, married Sir Oswald Mosley, Vile Bodies, indeed. I wanted to have a look at this book because Selina Todd mentions it, in her history, The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class . Characters in Vile Body, think here of...

I read this book in two sittings. It didn’t take me long. For those of you that don’t know Mitch Albom is ‘Author of the international bestseller tuesdays with Morrie ’. For those of you that did know, but forgot, it’s tagged below the author’s name on the cover. I’ve read tuesdays with Morrie and I can probably tell you the plot, Mitch Albom goes to visit this old guy called Morrie on a Tuesday, and then one of them dies and it’s not Mitch and...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lily-Poole-Jack-ODonnell/dp/1783522356 31 st July 2016, Lily Poole finally stumbled word wearily over the finishing line and hit the paying book market. Eleven months later, I finally got a copy of the print used on the cover of Lily Poole framed and hung on the wall facing me in the cupboard in which I write (yes, I’m writing this in a cupboard, I’ve always been weird that way). The cover is perfect. A beautiful piece...

Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was the zeitgeist book of the seventies. Like Harry Potter but for adults it came with its own mythology. The reader can study pre-production notes between James Landis who commissioned the book for the publishers William Morrow and Robert (Bob) Pirsig. In a note by Bob Pirsig dated June 15, 1973, the author admits to anxiety and moots changing the title of the proposed book from Zen and...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08z007p This is the kind of programme I felt I should watch. For a start it’s got Anarchist in the title. I could mention Kropotkin, but I don’t know who he is, or Sid Vicious, Anarchy in the UK . For me it’s more an attitude. Life Without Government? Like Huxleys’s Utopia, I’m not sure it’s possible but Carne Ross seems to think it is. I hope he’s right. What privileged position does Carne Ross come from that he...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b08ywk09?suggid=b08ywk09 I wouldn’t have watched a programme like this on Channel 4 or 5. I’m biased that way. Hate those that pedal welfare porn and mock sympathy with smattering of right-wing agenda. Trumpet at a them and us world and look at the money we’re wasting on scum. I’m not really sure this is much better. I know the script. Phoenix Futures Specialist Family Services in Sheffield offer addicts the...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08yrc78/i-know-who-you-are-series-1-episode-1 I must admit to overdosing on Cardinal recently and watching a whole series into the early hours. The premise of this Spanish drama is pretty simple but very complicated, because it involves memory and not remembering. Juan Elias Castro (Francis Garrido) may or may not have killed his niece, the beautiful Ana Saura (Susana Abaitua). Ana sent a phone message to...