What makes a novel good?
It is a truth universally acknowledged, as Elizabeth Bennett might have put it, that the novel is a story about people. No-one could disagree with this …
Archive by category Fiction
Wonder Woman’s kinky secret
Wonder Woman has been a long time in coming to the big screen, but the wait has been more than worth the while and the Amazonian princess has already …
Cloud Atlas (2012)
The Wachowskis crave complexity. David Mitchell gave them the fix they needed with his novel Cloud Atlas. After the Matrix franchise had revolutionised cinema …
Man Of Steel
After an unconscionably long wait, I finally get round to watching Man Of Steel (Zack Snyder, 2013). As this is a review, let me disclose my prejudices up …
In politics, beware the “Lord Jim” moment
Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim contains an important warning for those aspiring to political greatness. Jim is the young man who has everything – good …
How Weird Is “Sucker Punch?”
One of my FaceBook friends, whose opinions I respect, recently described the 2011 film Sucker Punch as weird but interesting, prompting me to wonder: just how …
Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
There are dozens of books that have been on the “To Read” shelf in my imagination for many decades. The older I get, the more likely it is that most of …
Why do Americans (and Brits) love Downton Abbey so much?
Downton Abbey has been one of Independent Television’s biggest money-spinners since its launch in 2010. Sales and audience figures have been specially good …
The origins of Orwell’s 1984
For two years, between 1941 and 1943, novelist and essayist George Orwell worked for the Ministry Of Information as a BBC Talks Producer for the Eastern …
Perfume: the story of a murderer
Perfume is one of those books that stands almost completely alone in literature. Perhaps Crime and Punishment or American Psycho might be found on the same …