celticman's blog

I like a good ghost story. And you can see from the number of re-prints and the way that The Little Stranger in no stranger to the shortlist for the Man Booker that this is a good. The book begins after The First World War then jumps thirty years to the end of the Second World War, with Dr Faraday and Hundreds Hall. The Hundreds Hall is in itself not just a Gothic backdrop but a major character in the book. It opens with Faraday an intelligent...

I know it’s the last series of Downton Abbey. It sells big in America where people like former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin things we live in stately homes. Lots of people here watch it. It’s won sacksful of awards for best drama. I’ve never seen more than a clip of an episode, yet Downton Avenue has me reaching for my Kalashnikov. There’s nothing down town about Downton Abbey. It’s a showcase of beautifully dressed people with...

Warning, I’m going to try and sell you something. It’s billed as ‘the best new writing from ABCtales’. Who decides what’s best? That’s a question that is often difficult to answer. Certainly, Stephen Thom, who wrote story of the year is here. And Alex Graves who wins poems of the year, every year, is included. My work is also in, but I’d guess that’s because I’ll have a book out later this year in which ABCtales act as my agent and get a fee. I’...

Robots are pattern-recognition machines who have grown arms, legs and visual awareness. Each time we take a step, for example, we are continually falling. Robots face the same problem, but they have not had tens of millions of years of evolution to solve it. Moore’s Law comes into effect here. Computing power which provides the software for computer hardware; robot’s arms and legs and eyes (these are anthropomorphic attributes) doubles every...

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-pushed-to-the-edge Derren Brown is a genius, an illusionist, a magician that does no magic, a man that uses reason like other folk wield hand guns. In one of his earlier shows he got a man to shoot him. But he’s still alive and still at it. Making his own shows, his own productions and selling the product to Channel 4. If the premise of his show can’t be described in one sentence it’s usually a dud...

A documentary with only a first name tells you a lot. In marketing terms it says you should know who this person is, someone with a unique selling point. Amy Winehouse died in 2011, her memory fading, but there’s lots of images in this dramatic retelling of her life and loves, and they are not of the Princess Diana variety of burning candles and flickering flames. No less that jazz great Tony Bennett, who we see working with Amy here, said ‘she...

You can’t blame the Conservative Government for the weather. But you can blame the Labour Government for the banking crisis of 2008. David Cameron made merry with the note left by Liam Byrne, chief secretary to the Treasury under Gordon Brown, to his successor ‘I’m afraid there is no money’ [left]. A throwaway line, much like Cameron talking about ‘all that green crap’. Because there is always money. How a government spends the money it has and...

Beyond reason is a different country and Aljaz Cosini has walked its paths, picked it flowers, crammed his mouth full of its fruits and swam in its many seas. ‘I have been granted visions – grand, great, wild sweeping visions. My mind rattles with them as they are born to me.’ Drowning or dying is a Damascene experience few come back to tell the tale, fewer still to live and tell. As readers we always look for clues as to who the writer really...

Someone gave me this book, perhaps knowing I’m never happier than when unhappy and wallowing in the worst of humanity, and it makes a pleasant change from Nazi death camps. Erving Goffman defined a total institution as a place that is isolated and enclosed as Carstairs Hospital obviously is, but a wider reading also acknowledges the secrecy that such places engender. My first attempt at novel writing, Huts , written around eight years ago takes...

I wasn’t sure how to structure this. I’d a vague idea about explaining the significance of the tax-credit U-turn by George Osborne and the jibes about Mao’s Little Red Book , a joke that backfired and made the Shadow Chancellor seem the more foolish. I also thought about telling you about my visit to the dentist. We are an ageing nation of shrinking gums. So I guess I’ll start there. I’m good on nostalgia. The dentist I go to is the same dentist...