What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye by Will Gompertz The BBC’s Arts Editor, Will Gompertz, is unusual for an arts commentator – he has a sense of humour and a mission to enthuse us about his subject. He is uniquely qualified – having worked for Read More
Category: Non-fiction
Handbagging it …
It’s in the Bag: What Purses Reveal and Conceal by Winifred Gallagher I’ve never been terribly concerned about handbags. For everyday use, I like a big bag which carries everything in enough pockets so that I can find things. I’m a big fan of Kipling bags which I buy in their outlet shop at Bicester Read More
Let’s talk about pop music
Pop Charts by Paul Copperwaite This was one of those impulse purchases in the charity shop. It’s the sort of book I’d never buy for myself, although I might have given it to my brother for Christmas as a silly present if I’d spotted it in a shop. For a pound however, it was a bargain Read More
Those maddening real-life Mad Men …
From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-line Dispatches from the Advertising War by Jerry Della Femina. This book was originally published in 1970 – an insider’s guide to the goings on in the ad industry in the 1960s by a guy who was there – one of the original Mad Men. Thanks to the success Read More
A Fun Way to Learn a Bit of Latin
Amo, Amas, Amat… and All That: How to Become a Latin Lover by Harry Mount While I love all things ancient and Roman, and can have a go at translating easy bits of Latin, I can’t claim to be able to write it at all. I can hear you exclaiming, “But you have a Latin Read More
America has never looked better…
The USA Book: A Journey Through America by Carla Zimmerman Last year a copy of the compact version of Lonely Planet’s The Travel Book came into my hands and it was a fascinating but brief tour around the world. (See my write-up here.) That small sized book was a lavish 900 page brick, so when Read More
My Reading Resolutions for 2009 – how did I do #4 (the final one!)
By now you might have cottoned on, by the series of bookish but not books-read posts, that I’m suffering a severe case of end-of-term-can’t-read-itis and have thus resorted to fillers; (all this pondering the stats is helping me formulate my books of the year though). Aside from that, I am reading The Moonstone but mostly Read More
Making Quantum Physics Accessible
On Wednesday, I am delighted that Marcus Chown, author of We Need to Talk About Kelvin: What Everyday Things Tell Us About the Universe” will be visiting my blog to do a Q&A as part of his blogtour to promote the book. Marcus is a best-selling science author and cosmology consultant for New Scientist magazine. Read More
From Wilson to Thatcher – what a decade!
When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies by Andy Beckett The 1970s were my formative years. I was ten years old in 1970, so I was a Seventies teenager. My 1970s were full of being a teenybopper with my beloved David Cassidy, girl guides then the youth club, and the hard graft of Read More
An evening with (the UK’s) Doctor Phil
So it was off to Abingdon School’s super Amey Theatre on Saturday evening for a couple of hours with the UK’s Doctor Phil – not to be confused with Oprah’s one! Phil Hammond is a doctor in general practice and a very funny comedian, and we were treated to his one man show full of Read More
An armchair traveller’s delight
The Travel Book by Lonely Planet Here’s my full written review… This is the new smaller format edition of Lonely Planet’s previous coffee table giant, but it’s still a doorstoppingly thick brick of a book! It has to be 900 pages to give even the tiniest snapshot of every country in the world, (plus a Read More
Proper Showbiz Memoirs …
I love good showbiz memoirs and biographies. None of that celebrity trash – I like proper life stories of people in any aspect of showbiz with distinguished and/or interesting careers. In particular, I always find the behind the scenes stories of the creative process are fascinating, be it on stage, on film or in the Read More
One from the archives
Updated and republished into it’s original place in my blog’s timeline My eight year old daughter recently asked me what my favourite film is. She probably meant which is my favourite film of hers … but I quickly replied The Blues Brothers. Not the best film ever made, and a close run for my top Read More
