My copy of this children’s story comes with three pages of fulsome praise from writers as accomplished as Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Susan, and publications as noted as the Spectator, the New Statesman and the Sunday Times. They must have seen something I didn’t. To me, this reads as though it were made up as …
The Memory of All That
In a long and busy career, Bryan Forbes (1926 – 2013) wrote novels and films, acted in television and films, directed films and, for a time, ran the film production unit at EMI. It’s safe bet to say he knew his subject. So it’s a little sad to say that this story of a struggling …
A Point of View
From a purely stylistic standpoint, Clive James is one of my favourite writers. His choice of words, elegant sentence construction and rhythmic prose are just a pure delight. He can also be very, very funny. “Hurricane Higgins smokes the way he plays [snooker] – as if there were not only no tomorrow, but hardly anything …
2 more Pendergasts
I’ve written before about how much I enjoy the Pendergast stories. Here are two more; one I liked and one I didn’t. The one I liked – Cemetery Dance – has our hero dealing with zombies in north-west Manhattan. The pale-skinned polymath is on fine form and it’s a lot of fun. A good read. …
