Blogs

Josh Ireland (2018) The Traitors: A True Story of Blood, Betrayal and Deceit.

Posted by celticman on Sat, 13 Apr 2019

Josh Ireland’s The Traitors was an Observer Book of the year and it’s terrific. A history book written like a novel and takes the reader from the hungry thirties to the post-war triumph of the new-world order. For those that backed the Axis powers and the Nazis, but were born in Britain, traitors to a man, there could be no redemption, but not all faced the hangman’s rope. There are parallels now with the nineteen thirties with the growth in...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 12 Apr 2019

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 12 Apr 2019 Really difficult to make choices this week, with lots of splendid stuff on the site. In the end though, Story of the Week had to be alexislebarouder's 'The Misery of Flight' for all sorts of reasons, the main one being that it is simply, as one commenter said, great storytelling: https://www.abctales.com/story/alexislebaroudeur/misery-flight A different kind of misery in our funny and heartfelt Poem of the...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 12 Apr 2019

Really difficult to make choices this week, with lots of splendid stuff on the site. In the end though, Story of the Week had to be alexislebarouder's 'The Misery of Flight' for all sorts of reasons, the main one being that it is simply, as one commenter said, great storytelling: https://www.abctales.com/story/alexislebaroudeur/misery-flight A different kind of misery in our funny and heartfelt Poem of the Week, Scorpio88's 'Misophonia'. Turns...

My Loneliness is Killing Me, BBC iPlayer, 'Next Big Thing', Series 1:7, directed by Tom Courtney and written by Michael Richardson.

Posted by celticman on Thu, 11 Apr 2019

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00039vv/next-big-thing-series-1-7-my-loneliness-is-killing-me This short film won a Scottish BAFTA, which pleased me because I’d met the writer, Michael Richardson, a few times on a writing course I got turfed out of for not being able to write. Fair enough. I often go off in tangents that have no relevance. It’s not Dennis Nilsen, killing for company, and blocking the drains with body parts, or, bottle...

STORY AND POEM OF THE MONTH

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Sun, 07 Apr 2019

Our Story and Poem for March, very kindly selected by Philip Sidney: If March was a colour I’d say it was that of a fading bruise across a drab-dawn grey, smattered with pale smudges of dirty mauve, greeny-yellow and tender pink. But on ABCtales March has been gold. The deep old gold of a throaty laugh from mikesize1: https://www.abctales.com/story/mikesize1/christ-stitches and Sean Mcnulty’s: https://www.abctales.com/story/sean-mcnulty/eulogy-...

The Murder of Jill Dando, BBC 1 and BBC iPlayer, directed by Marcus Plowright

Posted by celticman on Sat, 06 Apr 2019

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0003w40/the-murder-of-jill-dando There seems to be a plethora of anniversaries and murder reconstructions on all of the main channels. We’ve had the Bulger, The Yorkshire Ripper and Jack the Ripper recently and before that Fred and Rose West. The list goes on. Partly, I’d guess to the world-wide success of The Making of a Murderer. BBC couldn’t let the twentieth anniversary, 26 th April 1999, of one of its...

SA Law

Posted by Baker Street on Thu, 04 Apr 2019

The English Law

choosing schools 2019

Posted by Di_Hard on Mon, 01 Apr 2019

My son told me the other day about someone getting in trouble with a knife in the playground. I was worried, but thought, well, the school will be on it, it won't happen again. Then he explained he'd only mentioned it because it was someone he knew, who had been threatend and there was a knife incident of some kind every week. At his previous school the main topics of conversation were suicide or porn, and the children at this new school are...

Frances Hardinge (2015) The Lie Tree.

Posted by celticman on Mon, 01 Apr 2019

I don’t read a lot of young adult or children’s fiction, but for any budding writers the Costa Book of the Year 2015 is pretty much perfect. The narrator of the story, Faith Sunderlay, is at that in-between age where she’s considered neither girl nor women, on the cusp of making her Confirmation. Her father Reverend Erasmus Sunderlay is, as you’d expect with a name like that next to God, in the eyes of his family and Victorian society. Faith’s...

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