You may have noticed a complete absence of Aefelthrith and Gwladys since mid-February? On the other hand, this hiatus may have passed you by, completely, and I can't say that I blame you! What's happened to the story, you may ask yourself? Surely, we were within a gnat's doo-dah of the denouement? To which the answer is, yes, we were and I'm sorry it's come to a grinding halt in the way that it has. The explanation is that we had an unfortunate...

God keeps his promises. God is not a man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. If he says something he will do it. Numbers 23:19. God's word is settled forever in Heaven. Psalm 119:89. The grass withers and the flower fades but the word of God stands forever. Isaiah 40:6-8. Jesus said, 'Heaven and Earth will pass away, my words will never pass away.' Matthew 24:35. But we need to be receptive listeners. The Bible is...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002tb7c/brother https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_(2022_film) Brother is one of those films I know I’m going to like right from the get-go. I haven’t read the book. And I’m a bit thick. Even after the film ended I wasn’t quite sure how to place the music (hip-hop) and what part of America this acclaimed Canadian drama was set in the 1990s (Scarborough, Toronto). My sister lives in Canada in one of those...

Man of Bones is the third in the murder-mystery series featuring Revol Rossel. Setting is everything. It returns to the bleak, frozen landscape of Leningrad, winter 1953. Lowly militiaman Rossel has miraculously survived the NKVD and being part of a punishment battalion during the siege of Leningrad and following The Great Patriotic war, (Soviet casualties around 20 million), been deported to Siberia, which is a death sentence in all but name,...

Jacques was responsible for domestics including groceries and shopping, as well as dealings with lawyers and Mr Johan Loots. We have been almost completely isolated. I was more active in our homely affairs and internet. And little as there was too, I see to social matters and visiting with family and friends and internet, and then my chores, including all my own cleaning and washing. We saw the Lootse, other family as Rina de Klerk mostly, but...

Tom & Jacques Jacques was responsible for all the legal matters and domestics I had very little to do with it I did the social side. Mr Loots has been dodging and diving for years postponing a settlement at any cost with any possible excuse and only making promises without substantiating anything. He and other family are becoming less and less reliable. It has also become all the more difficult for us to cover other rightful personal costs...

A Traitor’s Heart is the second in a trilogy of books featuring Revol Rossel, a former militia lieutenant in Stalinist Leningrad. His nemesis, Major Nitkin, who literally cut short his career as a prodigiously talented violinist in the Leningrad Conservatory by cutting off two of his fingers and mutilating others, but also has the top-level connections in the Kremlin to protect him. At the beginning of the A Traitor’s Heart , Rossel is so far...

Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Show, BBC iPlayer, directed by Jessica Dimmock, https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rvt0/captive-audience-a-real-american-horror-story-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rvt1/captive-audience-a-real-american-horror-story-series-1-episode-2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rvt3/captive-audience-a-real-american-horror-story-series-1-episode-3 Wikipedia ‘My father was...

For most people, their level of happiness will depend on the things happening to them. As Christians, we have an inner happiness and peace which is there all the time, independent of our circumstances. Many Christians endured years of suffering in communist prisons. They forgot what bright colours looked like. One of them said Dante's poems and all the medieval paintings about Hell could not compare to the horrors of a communist prison...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent In the spring of 1944, I was in Los Angeles on an assignment I have mercifully forgotten and found myself, as one does in that city, drinking alone in a restaurant I could not afford. The restaurant was Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, which was and remains the place where screenwriters go to feel sorry for themselves in a dignified setting. I was at the bar. It was a Tuesday. The...