https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0014j4m/storyville-try-harder I’m unfamiliar with the American college application process. It’s a big country, but modelled, in theory, so school-test scores determine which colleges will accept students. The American dream is a quite simple belief that if you work hard you’ll get your just rewards. Student, Tina Zheng, for example, plans to be a brain surgeon. The adolescents featured in this documentary...

Roy Shaw (2003) Prettyboy. In the inside cover, Roy Shaw, in Acknowledgements, writes BUY MY BOOK…OR ELSE! There were a lot of or elses for Roy Shaw. The Prettyboy—a media tag before a bareknuckle bout. He saw it as a marketing tool, in the same way as Thomas ‘Hitman’ Hearns or other professional boxers. He was born in Stepney, London 1936. Bullied at school. He found when he hit back at his attackers he’d talent for inflicting hurt. And the...

Was it the 4 minute warning?

Two very haunting and unsettling pieces for you this week, which also have the advantage of being beautifully written. Poem of the Week is onemorething's 'The Tale of the Six Swans'. It captures the dark magic and timelessnes of the original story, giving it a new focus for our own times. It really is like reading a fairytale anew: The Tale of the Six Swans | ABCtales Story of the Week goes to Simon Barget's 'Fame'. This has a dark magic of its...

Storyville, Misha and the Wolves, BBC 4, BBC iPlayer, Writer and Director Sam Hobkinson. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00142bh/storyville-misha-and-the-wolves Jessica Brody, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel takes lessons from screenwriters.. The Hero’s journey. The ‘shard of glass’. ‘A psychological wound that has been festering beneath the surface of your hero for a long time.’ The moron’s moron, for example, a narcissistic psychopath with...

Kate Bush wrote the song Wuthering Heights - Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham lived it and continue to do so. They are now both alive and over 70.

On the cover is a picture of Lenny McLean, with a banner, The No.1 Bestseller and a quote (from Lenny) ‘I look what I am, a hard bastard’. The book has been ghost-written by Peter Gerrard who has worked with Reggie Kray and Ronnie Knight. The back cover shows a picture of a glowering Lenny with a sweep-over bald patch, wearing a white t-short, hands clenched as fists. The background shot is the sign for The Blind Beggar pub where Ronnie Kray...

Stepping away from writing for a day can sometimes extend into an unintended emptiness of words. For someone who has always had stories and thoughts swirling in her head, filling up any given downtime, it was happiness disrupting when my warm keyboard grew cold. After weeks of trying to write, I thought, “Okay that’s it, I‘ve run out of imagination, used it all up…I am no longer a storyteller.” That thought was disheartening because it felt...

Before you speak - T is it True H is it Helpful I is it Inspirational N is it Needful K is it Kind ( I discovered these words on a poster on a classroom door at Orchard Manor School in Dawlish when I visited yesterday, together with my elder daughter in order to take part in a tree planting ceremony on Holocaust Memorial Day.) Orchard Manor is a school for children who have been diagnosed with autism, some of whom have additional issues. They...

The Rise and Fall of the Krays, STV, ITV Hub. https://player.stv.tv/summary/espresso-krays ‘Rise’—‘Fear and Fame’—‘Fall. The first episode charts how the Kray twins with a propensity for violence rose from a humble working-class background in the East End of London. We’re on familiar territory here. The wife-beating father, who kicked their mum in the stomach, and caused her to miscarry. But no mention of their older brother, Charlie. Her...