celticman's blog

I watched The Reluctant Fundamentalist on BBC 2 recently. Mohsin Hamid was screenwriter and author, and the role of the narrator in the book Change[z] is much the same, but the plotting is slightly different. In particular, Changez's exotic girlfriend, Erica, in the book is given a backstory. Changez, in his doomed love affair, mirrors her doomed love affair. It's a short novel. Very few films are better than the book. Ben Hur is an example...

Hans Rosling is dead, but his work lives on here. Clichéd, I know. But Rosling does something we rarely do, he looks at the facts. And he concludes that the world is so much better than it’s ever been. He’s an optimist, a myth buster and all-round good guy. I’m none of these things. I’m a bit like Calimero, walking about under rainy skies with an egg-shell head and complaining ‘It’s an injustice. It’s an injustice’. This is a book I should...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bbbv4w/rip-it-up-series-1-1-blazing-a-trail https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bc3ljs/rip-it-up-series-1-2-success-and-excess https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bc3ljs/rip-it-up-series-1-2-success-and-excess Rip it Up and Start Again. Rip it Up and Start Again. That’s the lyrics to an Orange Juice song. I don’t know my contraltos from my tomatoes. Doesn’t matter. I loved Rip it Up , three hours...

I read both of these books very quickly in one day. Years ago I tried bending spoons when Uri Geller was on telly. It didn’t work then. Let’s just say it wouldn't work now. But good on him, I say, the multimillionaire got away with it. There’s that moment in Elmer Gantry when Burt Lancaster gets caught up in his own rhetoric he convinces himself he’s not a fraud. So far, so human. The most dangerous type of human is the one that is never wrong...

Prison, Channel 4, 9pm, produced and directed by Paddy Wivell. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/prison/on-demand/66913-001 https://www.channel4.com/programmes/prison/on-demand/66913-002 Durham Prison in the North East of England holds around 950 inmates on any given day. In the first episode there were no real surprises, apart from the prisoner that managed to smuggle a phone inside up his arse. He freely admitted to it on camera. There’s a...

David Halberstam was killed in a car crash in 2007, clichéd as it is, his memory lives on here. This is a book all American citizens need to read before saluting the flag. Old Glory, American Presidents should be handed it when they are sworn in and take office. The Korean War began on 25 th June 1950 and lasted three years. The forgotten war, a stepping stone into Vietnam. Military historian S.L.A Marshall described it as ‘the century’s...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b8cfcj/japans-secret-shame?suggid=b0b8cfcj In May 2017, twenty-nine year old Shiori Ito, claimed she had been raped by a television journalist, Noriyuki Yamaguchi. They had met in a Tokyo sushi bar. Ito hoped Yamaguchi would help her break into journalism and was willing to work as an intern. He was well connected to Japan’s elite, having written an authorised biography of the Prime Minister of Japan,...

The twin problems of Donald J Trump are entwined. Firstly, he is Donald J Trump. Secondly, he is in office as President of the United States. This four-part documentary follows reporters in the New York Times as they cover the newly inaugurated President. Much of news in online before it reaches print, as is shown here. Too late. Trump moves faster than any documentary crew and we already feel we know everything we need to know about him. What...

The spiel on the cover page, a kiss and tell from Jimmy Boyle: ‘She absolutely taught me how to love’. Em, as my old da would say, fanny wash. Sara in contrast has a whole book to tell the reader how it is or was. ‘At the end of the 1970s, I met and fell in love with one of Scotland’s best-known prisoners, Jimmy Boyle. Our two very different worlds collided in an unexpected way…’ I love books, but gave Trevelyan’s away after reading the first...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p066svr5/hidden-series-1-episode-1?ns_mchannel=email&ns_source=&ns_campaign=PANUK_DIV_23_IPL_Recommends_D&ns_linkname=bbcone_hiddendrama_dramathriller&ns_fee=0 As any of my long-term blog readers knows (which numbers about two and a bit) the embourgeoisement thesis that was used to determine whether working class folk can become middle class by becoming Luton car workers or continually...