Q Conversations 3: Spy novelist Charles Cumming
He ate my toast and drank my beer. But that seemed sufficient to put him at his ease and get him talking (good cop routine). And it was a lot of fun. Charles Cumming has managed to craft a very successful career as a spy novelist out of the failure to enter SIS/MI6 after their […]
Giving voice to the whistleblower: Le Carré on cracking form in A Delicate Truth
There’s a key moment when the oleaginous Foreign Office chameleon, Giles Oakley, goads his protegé and A Delicate Truth‘s protagonist, Toby Bell, about what he should do with his qualms about government policy in the run up to Iraq War. You’re exactly what the Guardian needs: another lost voice bleating in the wilderness. If you don’t agree with […]
Friday Fun 41: Mitchell & Webb debunking conspiracy theories
Some readers will know that my current obsessions are conspiracies and suspicions. One of these days, these may coalesce into something substantial. But that feels a long way off at the moment. Ho hum. But for now, if you want some brilliant ripostes to those who suck up every conspiracy theory going, then my suggestions […]
Q Conversations 2: the living legend that is Frances Whitehead
You may not have heard of Frances Whitehead – but if you have read any of John Stott’s books, you will have witnessed her extraordinary handiwork: transforming his handwritten scrawl into immaculate typescript ready for the publishers. For more than 50 years, she worked very closely with him and her perspective on his life and […]
Telling a story when words don’t get through
I believe in words. I believe in the importance of words. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I believe in the primacy of words. But words can never be exclusive media of truth, understanding and communication. Please note: they are the primary (i.e. supreme) means, not the only means. I’ve touched on this […]
Forging a future out of a pandemic of tragedy: Rhidian Brook’s The Aftermath
The months immediately after the close of the Second World War were confusing. One minute the Allies had been dropping bombs on Germany (as Col Lewis Morgan, the protagonist in Rhidian Brook‘s The Aftermath, points out, more bombs fell on Hamburg in one weekend than fell on the London in the entire war), the next […]
Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 55 (April 2013)
Oooooops – this is seriously late!! Many apologies. Been rather a busy week and completely forgot to post this! Sacred Treasure Shhh!! Chris Green on introvert preachers and introvert lightbulb changers Eddie Arthur quotes the wonderful Oscar Muriu on the traps of western (though here, particularly American) missionaries in E. Africa.
Expressing our lives in consumerist terms
A good friend, John Goering, was reading an article, alluringly entitled How to make trillions of dollars, and he came across this quotation, written over half a century ago (by one Victor Lebow in 1955). Like him, it made me sit up and notice.
