Blogs

This week we spoke with Cristina Henriquez, a brilliant American novelist who’s been called one of "Fiction's New Luminaries" by the Virginia Quarterly Review. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Glimmer Train, and Ploughshares, and her second novel (her first in the UK), The Book of Unknown Americans , publishes this Thursday, the 5th of June, with Canongate. It’s a deeply moving tale of one family’s determination to cope...

The last three weeks or so, India has been regarded for all positive reasons besides the stormy unvarying news that do appear every day, be it chauvinism, discrimination or messiness. Like many Indians, the recent vote cast was a dignity for that India needed to come out of all the ill-traits exploited by the erstwhile government during the last decade. Now why and how would one think of Modi, the new-fangled, spirited Prime Minister of India...

Twenty-five minutes of Stephen Sackur and subject. Stephen is warmly serious, confrontational when he needs to probe deeper, push harder. Yesterday he talked to Christian Purslow managing director of Liverpool FC from 2009-2010. Financial takeovers, a court case, should English football clubs be owned be foreign investors? Accountablity, do the owner give enough back to their loyal fans, do they care or is it all about money? The right questions...

So, it happened! I had it spot on. I said it wouldn't go the distance, I said it would end before the ninth round, I said there would be a knockout in rounds 6 -9. So all good there then. However, I picked the wrong fighter! The undercard lived up to all its hype. All the british guys fought and won well. At 22.00 the main event started. Groves came in to a fan fare of a tune I'd never heard before. But it was pumping and so was the stadium...

Searching for Sugar Man BBC 4 9pm, director Malik Bendjelloul (R.I.P.) This is one of those programmes that make you believe in Jesus. Jesus Rodriguez that is. He was a 1970s guitar playing, singer that wrote his own songs and was described by record producer as ‘way beyond a musical artist’ and above Bob Dylan. He brought out two albums in the early seventies. Both didn’t do as well at the producers hoped. His record company let him go and...

Writing a novel: it can feel like tackling an old jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing, or building a spider-web backwards, with an eye to making yourself the biggest knot possible.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rwm3r I never miss the Champions League Final. I never miss Wallander. When the whistle blew I didn’t know what to do. I decided to be a man and get drunk and boo the telly and watch the fitba. Later, in recrimination at missing the Wallander episode of ‘Missing’ I watched it on catch-up. I’m at that age now when I can say I love Wallander. He’s the kind of detective that gets drunk and leaves his gun in the...

Less than a week to go till Froch / Groves 2. I was there in Manchester for the first one and I’ll be at Wembley on Saturday for the re-match. To say I’m looking forward to it would be a massive under-statement! The hype is beginning to build. Every night this week there will a “behind the scenes” programme on Sky helping to increase the tension. Sky expect this to be their biggest pay per view boxing event EVER. It seems cheap to me at £17. I...

We were searchers. I grew from primary playground certainties and the landmarks of World Cup victory, Buzz Aldrin first man on the moon and Sandie Shaw winning for England with Puppet on a String. Then followed the paralysis of adolescent social withdrawal. At 15 I only felt human and accepted in my Saturday job at Clark's bakery, away from pressures of home and school. Then what? Looking back the era seems rougher, more violent than today. At...

The Champions League final is always a disappointment and this was no exception. Much was made of Atletico Madrid losing the final to Bayern Munich, after a reply, forty years ago. Little was said about how they cynically hacked and butchered Celtic’s Quality Street Kids and took turns booting Jimmy Johnstone up in the air at Celtic Park to help qualify for that final. Watch it on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDElMvVdOK4 . That’s...