Don't forget tomorrow is the last day for entries to the Alphabet Challenge ! So far, we have had 13 very eclectic entries showcasing the wide variety of ABCers' imagination and vocabulary. Can we squeeze any more out of those little grey cells ?

2nd call for contributors / collaborators

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/harvey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_(1950_film) Our parents would have known who and what Harvey was. But don’t expect anybody under fifty. They might be vaguely familiar with James Stewart. He was the Tom Hanks of yesteryear and resident good guy. Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1944) is a regular at Christmas. James Stewart is such a perfect match to the ever-so amiable Elwood P. Dowd it’s...

Picture this: You're 80 years old. Most people are kicking back with grandchildren, maybe tending a garden or binge-watching shows. Not Ramsey Campbell. This Liverpool legend is still out here crafting nightmares that slither into your brain and permanently set up shop. Fresh off turning 80 on January 4th 2026, he's proving age is just a number when it comes to writing psychological horror. His most recent novel, An Echo of Children is a slow-...

The Big Issue is a fiver (£5) now. I can remember the shock and disbelieve it was £2. Then £2.50…and so on. My sister gave me this copy. She bought it from an Eastern European women from outside Asda. Like most folk that catch her eye and don’t look away, I usually just slip her £2 and say I don’t want the magazine. Win-win. But not for the magazine. There’s a guy on the bridge at the shopping centre. He’s there every day and plays some musical...

Richard Laymon , an American master of horror, passed away on February 14th, 2001 from a sudden heart attack at just 54. Born in Chicago in 1947, Laymon married his beloved Ann in 1976 and raised a daughter, Kelly, while working as a teacher, librarian, and magazine editor. He wrote over 30 novels and 60 short stories, starting with The Cellar in 1980. He had a raw, fast-paced, often shocking style that found massive success in the UK and Europe...

David Szalay (2025) Flesh won the 2025 Booker Prize. That puts David Szalay into the stratosphere of book sellers. Last year’s winner, Orbit , Samantha Harvey’s quote on the cover is ‘Brilliance on every page’. ‘When he’s fifteen, he and his mother move to a new town and he starts a new school. It’s not an easy age to do that – the social order of the school is already well established and he has some difficulty making new friends. After a while...

‘Can we enter heaven with one leg?’ The little girl named Saja in Jabela, who lost her leg in an Israeli airstrike on her house before entering an eternal sleep due to the destruction of all hospital in Gaza had asked I think she entered with two.

Leonardo Da Vinci (2024), BBC iPlayer, Written by Sarah Burns and David McMahon, narrator Keith David, Director Ken Burns. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m00264cj/leonardo-da-vinci https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0026ch9/leonardo-da-vinci-series-1-2-part-two-paintergod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci_(2024_film) Ken Burns that heavyweight of public service films and whose documentary films have attempted to explain...

Our Man in Moscow – Panorama. BBC iPlayer My son worked in Moscow a few years ago. He liked it there. He always said that Muscovites are more open than you would imagine and that the streets felt safe unlike cities such as London. He returned to the UK after the start of the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine which saw tanks roll in from February 2022. The company he worked for was London-based and had decided to withdraw all of its...