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Usually, when someone lends me a book, it goes onto a bookshelf somewhere to be forgotten or, if I’m genuinely interested, onto the bedside table’s teetering “to be read soon” tower. But if the title is taken directly from my favourite speech from my favourite Shakespeare play, it has to jump straight to the front…
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As an aspiring author, desperate for a bit of traction out there in the wild west of publishing and book sales, the chance to appear on a local radio station has to be taken up, especially when they want you to talk about a favourite book. Oddly (or perhaps not), for me, the choice was…
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What was it, a week ago or so that the so-called US President threatened the overnight annihilation of Iran, the destruction of the oldest civilisation on the planet by the youngest? For the first time in a few decades, half the world went to bed wondering if they’d wake up to the news of a…
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The migrant crisis, as it is sometimes called in the UK, or the small boats issue (a far less worrisome-sounding phenomenon) is a difficult topic at the best of times, one that causes much handwringing and headshaking from the liberal left or (at worst) from the farthest right, downright racist responses in which human beings…
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In an age when large swathes of the publishing world seem obsessed with genre and want from their ‘bestselling authors’ the same story with the same cover art over and over again, it’s genuinely refreshing and inspiring to follow a writer like Benjamin Myers and not know what he’s going to do next. Readers of…
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Whilst driving to and from work, two news stories about space have caught my attention recently. The first has been NASA’s continuing preparations to “go back to the moon,” as they called it, and the second has been the story of the space station evacuation due to the serious illness of one of the astronauts.…
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There are few writers more quotable than Charles Dickens, and few books from his oeuvre more quotable than A Christmas Carol (1843). Indeed, every year in the UK, hundreds of thousands of English GCSE students are reminded by their teachers to reread the text over Christmas, or at least watch a film version and learn…
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Words by J. Patrick Armstrong It’s quite rare for a book to actually frighten me, to show me a familiar world and rip it apart with such skill, dexterity and reach that I am left with the awful conclusion that the apocalyptic horrors foretold in its pages will, almost certainly, come to pass. But that’s…
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Gabriel’s Moon by Willliam Boyd and James Ellroy’s The Enchanters take place at almost the same point in his history, as America and Russia race for space and the world lurches to the brink of nuclear war. Yet to read them back-to-back, you might think they were from different planets with different languages. And in…
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Words by J. Patrick Armstrong This week sees the inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term. A whole host of former presidents, stars and tech billionaires descend upon Washington to take part in what many around the world will more likely view as the repulsive return of a convicted felon who incited an ugly…