https://www.channel4.com/programmes/leaving-neverland-michael-jackson-and-me/on-demand/63905-001 It’s easy to condemn now that we know that Michael Jackson was a serial paedophile. Money and fame kept him safe. I remember reading something and it went along the lines of one of Michael Jackson’s advisors warned him not to have young boys in his bed. To stop having sex with them. And Michael Jackson said, ‘No’. There’s a line here that rings out...

Books are holy relics and none more so than this love letter to the lost. The Great Patriotic War as it is sold to the Russian people by the capitalist oligarchs is something to which they can hold on to. Something to which they can be proud. Forget the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and Stalin’s deal with Hitler and the division of Eastern European countries such as Poland. Forget the millions killed in countries such as the Ukraine by Stalin’s policy...

I got to page 35 of this book and gave up. The tale of Ignatius J. Reilly who has a high opinion of himself and a low opinion of humanity and his poor, put-upon mother whom he lives with, and is dependent on, could be described as farce. Anthony Burgess on the cover describes it as ‘A Fine Funny Novel. This is the kind of book one wants to keep quoting from.’ I don’t feel any great need to do that. The story of how I and so many others came to...

Our Story and Poem for the month of February very kindly chosen by Jolono: It never gets any easier. Choosing the winners for February gave me a few headaches, and no it wasn’t the three glasses of Red wine that I had whilst going through all of them! But winners have to be picked and here they are... This month’s winner for SOTM is TFH with La Femme d’argent. https://www.abctales.com/story/tfh/la-femme-dargent A moving tale of a romantic visit...

With a bushel of cherries to choose from this week deciding on the story and poem of the week was quite a task. There were two pieces that reached out to me though - so: story of the week goes to Linda Wigzell's intriguing and compelling piece of life writing: https://www.abctales.com/story/linda-wigzell-cress/family-connections Poem of the week goes to Jane Hyphen's evocative piece: https://www.abctales.com/story/jane-hyphen/thats-not-way-i-go...

We will soon be updating our submission details to include short story collections and novellas.

Think only of yourself. Think of your family. Martin O’Neil famously said he was leaving Celtic because his wife was ill. Fair enough. Personally, I think he knew, we all knew, Henrik had departed, Celtic needed a major revamp, the money for players was no longer available and a bloated squad –anyway- a mess he didn’t want to deal with. Maurice Johnston, the Partick Thistle striker, famously signed for Celtic, but then signed for Rangers...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000309g/la-la-land Only in LaLa land at the Oscars could LaLa Land best picture announced, could it turn out to be LaLa Land winner and LaLa Land loser, all within five minutes. It wasn’t Best Picture. But was it a good picture? Not bad. I’m not really into music. Put it this way, the director of Singin’ in the Rain Stanley Donen died and tributes poured in. Singin’ in the Rain in 1952 was a classic of the...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0002k62/storyville-under-the-wire Unhappy is the land that needs heroes Bertolt Brecht. A Private War directed by Matthew Heinemann and staring Rosamund Pike as the heroic shambles that was Marie Colvin is in cinemas now. I see no need to see it. It’s all here in Under the Wire . Based on a book by Paul Conroy and his experience in the massacres at Homs. Here we are at the last stand. 13 th February 2012,...

I read the review of Bloody February in The Observer and it’s like deja-fuck-you, somebody had wrote the song that you wrote and sings it better. Set in Glasgow, in the 1970s. My turf and my time and my subject matter. This book fucking scared me big time. I was scared this book would be everything I was not. Leading writers of Scottish noir praise Bloody January on the cover. Ian Rankin, Alex Gray, Peter May and Louise Welsh, ‘Bloody and...