At over a thousand pages Robert A.Caro’s biography of Lyndon B. Johnson is a hefty wedge of American history. We know power corrupts, but Caro also argues ‘power reveals’. We’re aware of that iconic picture of Jackie Kennedy standing with the former Vice President of the United States and now President, Lyndon Johnson. Power reveals. (But that was later, volume 4, the new Senator John F. Kennedy only makes a brief appearance, in volume 3, his...

Gilead was winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I’m sure I’ve read it before. And I keep picking it up and re-reading bits because I don’t know where I left off reading. It’s a story in which nothing much happens but life. A dying man writing a letter to his young son, who’s is young enough to be his great-grandson. It’s 1956 and the narrator is pondering whether he should vote for Eisenhower. And in recalling how his life didn’t amount to...

As you would expect from all the talent on here, we've had some great pieces reflecting on the current situation, some with sadness, some with anger, and some with humour. We have writers from all over the world, so wherever you are, I do hope that you and yours are staying safe. Please keep posting on here - on a selfish note, we will worry about you if you're not around! This week's Picks are not Covid-19 related - they're two very contrasting...

When we talk about the coronavirus it’s the virus part we need to pay attention to. Corona, from the Latin, means crown and is associated with the aurora that surrounds the sun, moon and stars. We also get the word coronary from corona, a constriction of the arteries around the heart. But here Covid-19, coronavirus, is a simple nametag to differentiate it from other viruses, in the same way that ship number 736 in John Brown’s yard was later...

Miriam’s Big Fat Adventure, BBC 2, 9pm, BBC IPlayer, producer and director Simon Draper. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000g6qt/miriams-big-fat-adventure-series-1-episode-1 Miriam Margoyles is elderly (78-years old), she’s fat, she’s Jewish, she’s gay-ish and she used to be an actress. I remember her painted green as Grotbags in a witch’s cap. She’s invisibility squared. But she’s BBC’s documentary crew’s go-to-pensioner. The female...

The question today is: Should I self publish my work? But to self publish is not as easy as the power points would have you presume. Recently, I’ve been contemplating uploading some of my work to the (KDP) Amazon’s kindle site, but as I researched this, I found a lot of different information about what you might want to, or need to, do first. Apparently, there are many areas I hadn’t thought about, for example: Is it wise to be a sole proprietor...

Elizabeth Strout (2016) Olive Kitteridge Having read (and reviewed) Olive, Again , Anything is Possible and My Name is Lucy Barton in the last few months, Olive Kitteridge is the best Elizabeth Strout novel I’ve read. Some authors, most authors—myself included—tend to write the same story again and again. Different haircuts, shiny shoes, but the same characters appearing again, renewed. From writer to reader there needs to be an emotional...

I love writing that takes you on multiple journeys - that's just one reason I've chosen these two wonderful pieces from fabulous choices this week. Story of the week goes to Parson Thru and his atmospheric wander across time: https://www.abctales.com/story/parson-thru/buses Poem of the week is full of startling images, ideas and emotions, a woderful piece from Noo: https://www.abctales.com/story/noo/music-binds Here's the inspiration point:...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000frcl/storyville-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-porn-superstar I missed the first few minutes of this. I expected to see (not that I watch porn) blonde hair and silicon breasts and a solid arse so big it would have shamed a Kardashian and housed half of dancing Africa with bongo drums. Instead I got this guy, who called himself Jonathan Agassi and he was in Berlin. He dressed down to go out in a pair of tight-...

This was one of Bob’s book, I inherited. The second evangelic one I’ve read that somebody obviously had given him. A message inside the flyleaf: ‘Be Inspired!’ I guess Bob was looking for something. We all are. I had to have a coming out party, when people found out—yes, I was a writer. And yes, a second coming out party when I admitted I believed in God—well sometimes, more often than not, but not very often. Ned Flanders in The Simpsons is the...