Blogs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b063f57q/dont-take-my-baby This drama comes with lots of baggage. Around 3000 children are removed from disabled people every year. Writer Jack Thorne has distilled their voice and created composite characters that let them speak. Tom (played by Adam Long) is partially sighted. He is full- time carer and lover of Anna (Ruth Madley). She has a muscle wasting disease and every two years is told by specialist...

In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "Finite Creatures." It’s front page news in the Observer , Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II giving a Nazi salute. Pages of piffle devoted to it. What is Her Royal Highness hiding in the royal wardrobe, an SS guard’s uniform? I’d say give her a little slack. She was a kid. Kids do stupid things. I’ve done it myself. Well not that exactly. But on Friday night I watched a programme on Channel 5,...

Jon McGregor (2013) This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You. Jon McGregor winds his way across a mythical country, it might even be England, from Horncastle in the first story ‘That Colour’ to Marshchapel in ‘I’ll Buy You A Shovel’ in this collection of thirty short stories. ‘Sharp, dark and hugely entertaining’ says the blurb on the cover, a quote from Observer. ‘Haunting and brilliant’ Independent. I’m underwhelmed. Take...

I’d a vague notion of who Alan Johnson was. I read this book because I wanted to chart his journey from ordinary working-class bloke—when the book begins, ‘a seventeen-year old shelf stacker at Anthony Jackson’s supermarket on the Upper Richmond Road in East Sheen’— to becoming an MP in the Conservative government under Thatcher, or John Major. I couldn’t remember which Prime minister it was. Alan Johnson became a Labour MP and severed in the...

We're always thrilled to welcome new writers and we've had some wonderfully talented people joining this week. One of them is the winner of our Story of the Week, and it seems we're not alone in our appreciation - when we flagged it up on Facebook it recieved over 2000 engagements which I think is a record for ABCtales in such a short time! Congratulations to David WJ Lee for Grown Man Cries in The Bahamas - we can't wait to read part two...

Our next reading event will be held in Nottingham on Saturday, September 5 th from 7pm at The Cross Keys, 15 Byard Lane, Nottingham, NG1 2GJ. If you haven’t joined us before, it’s a laid-back, sociable event with the opportunity to meet other members and enjoy live poetry and fiction from some fabulous writers. If you fancy making a weekend of it, Nottingham is home to world class sport and steeped in the legends of Robin Hood. There are lots of...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02tc97z/cordon-episode-1 I’m a bit of a cultural snob. I loved Wallander . Then The Killing . And I’d a brief fling with 1874 . Now I’ve gone all Flemish and I’m six episodes into Cordon . It’s a very simple premise: what if a disease as contagious as Ebola arrived in a city like Antwerp and the authorities decided to seal off that zone for 48 hours. Then that time frame is extended. Those inside the cordon...

Labour should drop the drawbridge between Oxbridge and the House of Commons and allow its putative MPs to mingle with the common herd. The thaumaturgic touch may heal the collective illusion of knowing what they’re doing. The third world war has begun – it’s called global warning. Labour should stop the Panda watch at Edinburgh zoo which costs hundreds of thousands of pounds and subsidises the Chinese economy. We should import polar bears. A...

This week's winning story is told from the perspective of a young girl and the narrator's voice is utterly convincing. Fantastic sentiments on show but never sentimental. Well done love_writing for: Bottle Johnny The contributions from the poets this week has made picking a winning submission nigh on impossible. In the end I had to settle on a tie between Last Request by EB: Last Request it's a poem that at once touches on minute details and...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b061vbdj/children-of-the-gaza-war Yet another war in Gaza. The third war in six years. Hamas has been sending rockets into Israel. Killing indiscriminately. Israel invades, but it’s a mismatch. It’s not street to street fighting. Israel controls the sky and coastline. They have the latest technology and are fearful of picking up troop casualties and the backlash which would entail. Overwhelming force. War by...