This slim volume of the, at the time, relatively revolutionary poetry of the Liverpudlian poet, Roger McGough, I discovered on the bookshelves at my brother’s home when visiting recently. This edition was published by Jonothan Cape in 1972, though the title poem was first published in 1969. I picked it up to read while waiting …
Continue reading Watchwords, by Roger McGough: #BookReview.
Subtitled ‘The Dry Crumbs Of An Adventure’, this is a humorous tale of unlikely events taking the reader from darkest London to even darker Egypt via routes made more convoluted than expected by the hapless participants.Two ‘gentlemen’, I use the term loosely for these men, earn their comfortable if confined living by producing an archaeological …
Continue reading The Curious Cliché of The Black Scarab, by Mark Millicent: #BookReview.
Subtitled 'Forget General Knowledge, here's the right stuff!'In common with the other books in this series, this isn’t a volume to sit down and consume in one go. It’s a pleasurable source of entertainment combined with education that deserves to be savoured so each tasty morsel provides the full flavour and nutrients to the knowledge …
This is my seventh post on the progress of my WIP. I suspect it won’t be the last. But I feel I’ve made real progress.The last post was on 19th July, when I was about to start work on Chapter 24 of 40, and the MS stood at 121,716 words over 280 pages. Today, it …
Continue reading How Goes the WIP?
Reviews for books are often overlooked by readers searching for something to read. So, I thought I'd share some short quotes from reviews of my books over the years. This one is a short book, available in digital form only. It'll appeal to those readers who enjoy some spine-tingling, a bite of horror, a delve …
Continue reading Sharing the Love
My books feature on another author's website that examines the emotional aspect of writing fiction. You'll find this very interesting post here.
This 500-page encyclopaedic tome is one of a set of art books I was given by a kind and generous stranger, a woman neighbour from a nearby village. I’m conducting research for a novel, and the visual arts feature significantly in the story. Whilst I have some knowledge of the art world, working as a …
Continue reading What Great Paintings Say, by Rose-Marie & Rainer Hagen: #BookReview.
Jacques Louis David “Love of Paris and Helen”, from the Louvre Museum in Paris. 22nd June 2025 When I last reported on progress, in May, the book in its developing form, stood as follows: 270 pages, a word count of 116,291, and 40 chapters. As I pen this update after my writing has been much …
Continue reading Further Progress on the #WIP.
Subtitled Pre-history to Avante-garde. The 28 contributors to this encyclopaedic tome are listed inside the book. All specialists in their fields.As the subtitle notes, it deals with art from pre-history through to the avante-garde, with the final dated entry from 1986. At the end of the beautifully illustrated set of sections, is a collection of …
Continue reading The History of Art, by Blitz Editions: #BookReview.
Sebastian Barry has written one of those rare books that portray emotion without sentiment, diametrically opposed views with neutrality, and complex events in a manner easy to follow. Nevertheless, I was moved to tears on more than one occasion, and therefore rather pleased I was reading in private.The hypocrisy of religion is described without rancour, …
Continue reading The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry: #BookReview.
Writers Need Good Luck Sometimes. There you are, busily editing the first draft of your amazing, soon-to-be best seller WIP, hoping to move on toward that goal of publication when, from some inexplicable, unrecognised source, two new and unrelated ideas pop into your head. The question then is whether to give these intruders room to …
Continue reading A Spot of Serendipity
This sumptuously illustrated book of 400 pages of visual art and its history is an attempt to show the development of pictorial representation from the earliest daubes and scratches on the walls of caves all the way through to the more modern daubes and splashes that can apparently be counted as art. In between are …
Continue reading Timelines of Art, by DK: #BookReview
Subtitled ‘Women, Art and the Power of Looking’, this book entered my reading list as a resource for research for a novel I’m writing.It has filled that requirement far better than I ever imagined. The breadth and depth of research the author has conducted to compile this treatise on the misogyny and injustice dealt out …
Continue reading Women In The Picture, by Catherine McCormack: #BookReview.
This short story appeared in a charity anthology, ‘Wrong’ to benefit Creative Writing Institute that sponsors cancer patients in writing courses. The theme was 'I have a list and a map. What could possibly go wrong?'You’ll find a link to the book at the end of the story. A Fork in the Road Lauren tapped …
Continue reading A Fork in the Road: Short Story
Translated from the original French, by Alison L. Strayer, with remarkable insight and understanding of the original text, this ‘autobiography’ is an extraordinary piece of work. I use quotes around ‘autobiography’ because this book is so much more than that. It’s a brilliant mix of life story, history, sociology, philosophy, meditation, and poetry. Although some …
Continue reading The Years, by Annie Ernaux: #BookReview.
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