Ryszard Kapuscinski was born in 1932 and grew up in the Polesie region on Poland (today Belorussia). Pinsk was liberated by Soviet troops in 1939. From what wasn’t clear. He learned the Cyrillic Russian alphabet as school from a single copy of Stalin’s Studies in Leninism, watched arbitrary mass deportations to Siberia and starved with his family. He remained liberated for most of his adult life and witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989...

Colson Whitehead (2019) The Nickel Boys. Simone Weil: ‘The Present is something that binds us. We create the future in our imagination. Only the past is pure reality.’ Colson Whitehead won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Underground Railway , a blend of fiction and fact. The Nickel Boys doesn’t need to stray far from the truth. America jails more people than any other nation combined, blacks for once have a majority. Whitehead in dipping...

I am in the Covid Club. I tested positive this morning. I have notified everyone I can possibly think of. I have posted a big Covid notice on my front window displaying my positive test and told everyone who reads it to stay away from my house until I remove my notice. I am staying at home for at least five days. My covid app tells me to self-isolate for 11 days. The government is now removing all restrictions including those for people in my...

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...