celticman's blog

Sabine Dardenne was twelve, cycling to school on her bike, when an old camper van pulled up. The side doors slid open. The kidnappers lifted her from her bike and stole her from her family, 28 th May 1996. Fifteen books were published in Belgium about her abduction. 400 000 pieces of paper into an enquiry of what happened and why it was allowed to happen. Eight years later, Sabine Dardenne with the help of author Marie-Therese Cuny, offers her...

Most nations have soldiers considered the best of the best. A deeply unpopular Margaret Thatcher won an election on the back of the Falklands war. On 5 th May 1980, it took the SAS 17 minutes, much of it filmed and shown repeatedly on the telly, of them abseiling from the roof of the Iranian Embassy in South Kensington to free 26 hostages. We love our heroes. Leah Garret is asking us to remember a largely forgotten group. It’s in the title: The...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00265qy/since-yesterday-the-untold-story-of-scotlands-girl-bands ‘That’s terrible,’ a mother said of her daughter and her pal’s attempt at making music. ‘Would you not be better singing a nice wee Irish ballad?’ I’m not sure who or how to match mother and daughter in these girl groups—not a music lover or listener—I’m siding with the mother here. Making music is one part of it, misogyny and class bias...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_Boys I’d read the book. So I kinda remembered what happened. The plot is straightforward moral outrage. Man traps. Jim Crow laws. Mutilating and killing black kids inside the Dozier School for Boys, renamed and repacked as The Nickel in sunny California. An episode of Danny Robin’s Uncanny , ‘The Haunting of Hollymont Farm’ ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0027g7b/uncanny-series-2-1-the-haunting-of-...

Black Lives Matter. The moron’s moron Trump proved they don’t. Ripping up a Black Lives monument in Washington wasn’t exactly Kristlenacht . Just a little reminder. A little nudge. Know your place. Class matters. Race and skin colour matter more is the kind of argument Paterson Joseph became involved in. ‘Critical fabulation’ based on a real character, a black man in Georgian London, Charles Ignatius Sancho. In other words fiction. A reminder...

Poets make the best prose writers. I’m no poet. So I should know. Speak, Memory is a collection of pre-Second World War articles published before Nabokov had written and published Lolita . I’ve read Lolita and Pale Fire . I use the past tense and use the term ‘read’ imaginatively. My memory isn’t good. Pale Fire, I didn’t like or remember much other than vague shadows or reasons which I also can’t remember or don’t really care, which is perhaps...

Brett Anderson is the lead singer of Suede. I’ve heard of the band, but not listened to any of their records. His first love was Justine Frischmann. She was also was a founding member of Suede and later became the frontwoman of Elastica. They both attended University College London in the late seventies. Nope. Never heard of her either. I can’t therefore be described as a fan. I don’t listen to music. I’m not likely to erect a flagpole and fly...

Abir Mukherjee has written five international bestsellers set in 1920s India, (Wyndham & Banerjee) still owned by the English between the First and Second World War. I’ve not read any of them. Hunted is my first stab at his work. The author informs readers it took three years to write almost 500 pages. He’s from Hamilton. Just up the road from me. I’m not saying that’s a great achievement, coming from Hamilton, many people do. But if he came...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-banshees-of-inisherin Critically acclaimed The Banshees of Inisherin reunited Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson with Richard McDonagh after their successful collaboration on In Bruges. McDonagh’s repertoire of works also includes award winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and this was classified as a return to his roots. You get the message. This was or is a great film. One of the classics. To...

‘A spectre is haunting Europe,’ Archie Brown (2010) begins his book about the Rise and Fall of Communism. He wasn’t talking about Trump. Back then he was just another draft-dodging rapist and racist, who refused to rent property to black people, liked glittery things and to be on television. Putin had left the KGB and had set himself up as a fixer or mafia-type businessman, who retained strong links to his past. The spectre haunting Europe was...