celticman's blog

Eighty years ago, today, 27 th January, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz death camp. In the same week as one of a handful of the the richest men in the world, Elon Musk denied giving a Nazi Hitler salute of the inauguration of the 47 th American President, we commemorate the Chinese Year of the Snake and the Holocaust. Mark Hodkinson’s biography isn’t about world leaders, with their Jupiter-sized egos. His story is about an ordinary man,...

I was scrolling through lots of films I didn’t want to watch. CODA didn’t jump out but it was brilliant. One of those movies that leaves you feeling better about yourself. I later learned it won a Bafta for best script and best actor in 2021. CODA stands for Children of Deaf Adults. It’s not something I think about. This is show, rather than tell. Ruby Rossi works on a fishing boat off Gloucester, Massachusetts. Teenage girls don’t usually work...

Write what you know. Jenni Fagan writes about what she knows. You’ll find many of the same characters in her autobiography, Ootlin. A child set up to fail. To follow the path set out for them from cradle to grave. From carers that don’t care. A prison system that is all too familiar for graduates of children’s homes. Jenni’s fictional other, Anais is 15, and she’s been sent to the Panopticon. Her age is crucial. Sixteen, she becomes an adult...

Shit. If you’re like me, and you tell your big sister that she should really move house because it’s going to burn down (she lives in Canada, not LA California) but not to worry too much because her grandkids are toast, because of global warming, then, as Hannah Ritchie shows, you’ll really need to change your apocalyptic-scenario storyline. I’ve got a fall-back position that the moron’s moron Trump will start a war with China. So I’m kinda OK...

Here’s the remit. Denise Mina was commissioned to write about Mary Queen of Scots through a contemporary fictional lens. A very short novel in which the major characters of the Scottish aristocracy appear in a plot against the Crown. She focused on the murder of David Rizzio aged 33, at Holyrood, on Saturday the 9 th March 1566. Rizzio came from an area we now call Italy. A commoner that could speak four languages and acted as the Queen’s...

I’d read (and reviewed) Billy Moore’s A Prayer Before Dying . He tells the reader how Prisoner ‘Moore A7853AP’ is getting released from Wandsworth Prison. He’s finished his time after getting deported from the Thailand prison system. Free but not really free. Like over 70% of other prisoners he’s soon back to doing what he was doing. The UK prison system is a costly mess. But Moore is one of the lucky few. For starters, he can read. His book, A...

My expectations of this film were so low I was ready to switch off before I watched the first frame. But they flipped stereotypes by blowing something up, and commenting on expectations. I was sucked right in. An absolute raging ragtag delight. The best film since Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments , which was set on the other side of the Irish border. The music in The Commitments was classified as soul. The kind of music an old guy, like me, would...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002385t/parole-series-2-1-trust-no-one https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002385w/parole-series-2-2-can-leopards-change-their-spots https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002385z/parole-series-2-3-no-smoke-without-fire https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0023860/parole-series-2-4-the-gravest-of-mistakes Jimmy Boyle claimed he’d no special skills other than ‘being good at violence’. I’m friendly...

Sir Alex, BBC 1, BBC iPlayer, Director Jason Ferguson, Narrators, Sir Alex Ferguson and Jason Ferguson. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m0026jq0/sir-alex?seriesId=m0026jpz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Ferguson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Alex_Ferguson:_Never_Give_In A hagiography of the longest serving and most successful manager of Manchester United. And the most successful manager of Aberdeen and of British football—by...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict_in_2024 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0ep0j83p7o Nathan Thrall’s account of a traffic accident where a bus flipped and six kindergarten children and a teacher escorting them were burnt to death and others injured was the winner of The Pulitzer Prize. It focuses on the life of one parent, Abed Salama, mirroring A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by...