National Geographic have reprinted a series of adventure & exploration classics. The usual suspects are included; Lewis & Clark, Cherry-Garrard, Howard Carter etc.
I’ve read a couple and the original text has been left unaltered, with[…]

Upper Clapton in East London was once an up and coming area. Henry VIII owned Brook House, a 15th century country manor, now an ugly sixth form college. That was its heyday. The Krays lived in the area for a while, but considered it too rough.
A coup[…]

Chelsea
Of all the stupid money being thrown around by Chelsea, the two Argentines are the ones I really can’t get to grips with. Now, neither Crespo or Veron took the Premiership by storm. At a cost of over ’30m, that’s a big waste[…]

The Bridge at San Luis Rey
A new film version has been completed and sits in pre-release limbo. Two previous attempts have met indifferent reaction, the first in 1929 (a year after the novel won the Pulitzer Prize) and the second in 1944.
The story […]

The Horror Channel recently stole into the Sky schedules in the dead of night. Programming output is based on a mixture of Hammer Horror, b-movie trash and little known classics such as Hard Rock Zombies – When a rock band are brutally murdered[…]

It rained yesterday. 
 
“St. Swithin’s day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St. Swithin’s day if thou be fair
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair”
 
A former teacher introduced me to the […]

Those Big Russian Novels
 
I’ve had both of Tolstoys big novels on my bookshelves for some years. I’ve used them as bookends, doorstops and once threw War & Peace at an ex-girlfriend. The only thing I haven’t done is read t[…]

Strangest football story of the week.[…]

The Orange Prize for fiction compiled a vote of the living library of top 50 essential contemporary reads.
To be in, you needed to be well thought of by bookish sorts (the survey was undertaken during the Hay festival) and not dead.[…]

The Clerkenwell Literary Festival is under way, full programme here.
Some of the evening shows start too early, (unless you happen to work in Clerkenwell of course).
I guess the most popular event (judging by ticket price if nothing else) will be Iai[…]