Damon Galgut’s novel, The Promise , won the Booker Prize in 2021. In a Strange Room was shortlisted for the Man Booker almost ten years ago. This is a short book, split into three parts: ‘The Follower,’ ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Guardian’. I liked the ‘The Guardian’ best and ‘The Follower’ least. I doubt I’d have continued with the book if it hadn’t had the tag: Booker Prize-Winning Author on the cover. I’m not immune to hype. Like the moral...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dgrqhx/mayflies-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dgrryf/mayflies-series-1-episode-2?seriesId=p0dgrpz0 My partner said I’d like this. We don’t have the same tastes. She watches fuckin Emmerdale and Coronation Street. But she knows I’m a sucker for anything Scottish, with actors playing working-class characters. I’ve not read Andrew O’Hagan’s book, yet. So I’m doing it in the wrong...

People have done very well indeed, when one considers that most of the week has been Twixt-mas - or as the Scots have it "The Daft Days". Story of the Week Maddan's final monthly ghost story rounds the year off with a belter, "The Glitch". Poem of the Week I've chosen Onemorething's December Ravens as poem of the week, it's good to see the word 'bister' being used. Reading this kind of poetry is like watching the pastoral linking shots in '...

‘Death begins when no one can remember you any longer.’ Reading is what I do. That’s a quote from a Fresh Water for Flowers , a book I recently read in which the main character is a cemetery keeper. I got a Facebook message from Biggins telling me Debbie was dead. I replied, I didn’t know any Debbies. Then I thought about it some more and sent another message, ‘Debbie Gilmour’? Her daughters Jasmine’s and Victoria’s Uncle Joe did the talking at...

This is my non-fiction book of the year 2022. Ideally, it should be read before or after my film documentary of the year: Big Oil v The World. (A transcript of the third part of the series has been attached in Notes). When people talk about disinformation or misinformation that’s a polite way of saying you’ve been lied to. Again and again you’ve been lied to. Your children are going to die. Your children’s children are going to die in such vast...

Don’t judge the book by the cover. We all do. The cover of Fresh Water for Flowers is iffy. Poor even. But it didn’t stop it being the clichéd: The Number 1 International Bestseller , more than one million copies sold. Most non-international books (my book included) sell 12 copies, which we’re grateful for without the hype and headlines. But hey, although I bear a life-long grudge, I’m willing do dive right in. In other words, I start reading...

Historians that buy into the great-man theory of history learn how to write fiction. Look no further than the moron’s moron and 45 th American President. That kind of stuff writes itself. Neal Ascherson isn’t that kind of historian or that kind of journalist. Wars are won by women and men doing their best while knowing that something bigger than them is happening. The story begins in Greenock on the banks of the Clyde. Gateway to the Atlantic,...

Memoirs are made-up stories based on a subjective version of truth. But if you are a Jehovah Witness the only truth worth knowing comes from the Bible. The literal words of God. Ali Millar’s mum was a Jehovah Witness in the same way I was brought up a Roman Catholic. She was brought up in the truth, but she couldn’t keep up the lie. Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit coming-of-age drama shone brightly. It illuminated the truth...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001gf5s/my-old-school ‘The subject of this film does not want to show his face.’ But we’re shown it anyway, in animation, in media coverage of the aftermath of the event. Seventeen-year-old Brandon Lee enrolled in Bearsden Academy in 1993. He wanted to become a doctor. You get a lot of doctors in Bearsden and dentists and their middle-and-upper-middle class ilk. Brandon Lee’s father was apparently a doctor...

https://tinyurl.com/4a46jtek On page 5 of the foreword, author Mark Burrows tells the reader, ‘the following is a work of fiction’, and whatever Kafka was thinking, people don’t turn into pigeons, but Tories are still cunts. Realism begins with truth. He might not have used those exact words. I might be factional with his realities. Anger at the fuck-you world we’re forced to live in. Shit trickles down doctrines of Tory policy makers, you...