https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007clvf/louis-theroux-the-most-hated-family-in-america https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0107zhy/louis-theroux-americas-most-hated-family-in-crisis These are snapshots of white America in 2006 and 2010 and the evangelical Phelp’s family from Topeka, Kansas, who preached a creed of hate and intolerance and labelled it Christianity. Who wrapped their family in the nation’s flag and the First Amendment of...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?filter=programmes&q=End%20Of%20Days&suggid=urn%3Abbc%3Aprogrammes%3Ap06qc33m I asked my girlfriend if she’d heard of Waco. No, she hadn’t. That shocked me a bit. But I’m the reader that sometimes writes stuff in the family, nobody ever reads. And, of course, I’d heard of David Koresh, but I didn’t know that wasn’t his real name, he’d picked it for the biblical resonance in the same way Shirley Crabtree called...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bs2v31/a-great-british-injustice-the-maguire-story?suggid=b0bs2v31 Fake news. Well, here’s a fake conviction that of the Maguire Seven: Anne Maguire, her husband Patrick, her teenage sons Vincent and Patrick, her brother Sean Smyth, her brother-in-law Guiseppe Conlon and a family friend, Patrick O’Neil. Prime minister Tony Blair was quoted on television and news media, on 10 th February 2005, to apologise...

Debut screenwriter and director Daniel Kokotajalo weaves together apostasy in Kingdom Hall, and strands of growing sexuality and defiance in a North of England family setting. Middle-aged, Ivanna (Siobhan Finneran) has two teenage daughters and holds on to Jehovah Church doctrine like a nursing mother. The gold standard here is Jeanette Winterton’s autobiographical 1985 novel, adapted as a 1990 BBC serial, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. The...

Two pieces on the theme of memory caught my eye this week. Story of the Week is jolono's 'Mr Russ'. It's a deceptively simple tale of a family and their elderly neighbour sharing food, friendship and a few games of cards, but the characters and the warmth of the emotions reach out and envelop the reader. I couldn't stop thinking about it once I'd read it: https://www.abctales.com/story/jolono/mr-russ Poem of the Week goes to agnosticnun's '...

Lots to choose from this week and, naturally many had a Remembrance Sunday connection. However, amongst the prose, I was struck by Noo's nihilistic story about, well, I'll leave you to decide what this well-crafted oddity, Passive Voice, is about. Poem of the week does have a Remembrance Sunday theme, this wonderful poem Mesopotamia by Philip Sidney is about a lesser known campaign and all the more powerful for it. The Inspiration Point is here...

OUTBRANCHING

This started as a 'Project' while waiting for edits of my next Eva installment (Eagles Hunt Wolves). I had an idea from reading Ian Fleming's 'From Russia with Love' where Bond suggests a different kind of spy join the 00 ranks. I had some 'shaving's' from Eagles Hunt Wolves, chapters that never quite worked or wound up in the bin, taking two deleted scenes, like a starter for bread, I took out Eva, created Sebastion Holt and re-worked the...

100 years since the war that was supposed to end all wars was won and lost. This is a poem from that time by a lady called, Vera Brittain. It was dedicated to her fiancé, Roland Aubrey Leighton, who was killed at the age of 20 by a sniper in 1915, four months after she had accepted his marriage proposal. PERHAPS Perhaps some day the sun will shine again, And I shall see that still the skies are blue, And feel once more I do not live in vain,...

The nights are drawing in - a time for contemplation and chills. The picks of this week provide both. Poem of the week is London Calling's beautiful and moving, when you are the ocean: https://www.abctales.com/story/londoncalling79/when-you-are-ocean Story of the week is a bargain read one get two free from Noo, with her unsettling trio of mask stories, Sincere: https://www.abctales.com/story/noo/sincere-part-3 And here is the inspiration point...