Book Review: The Marches, by Rory StewartI'd seen one half of a pair of TV programmes by Stewart on the consequences of Hadrian's Wall for Britain, but missed the other programme. Nonetheless it piqued my interest and I went looking for more, discovering this book as "forthcoming" on Amazon. After something of a hiatus, it was published last year ( Read more... )

Due to a mix-up earlier this month, Mrs Q had already visited Tate Britain's Paul Nash exhibition, so I went on my own yesterday. There was quite a wide range of work, and I'd seen a few pieces before, but there was also quite a lot that seemed new to me. Some of the early works, such as The Three, immediately made me think of Magritte, although it ( Read more... )

Book Review: Shadows of War, by Michael RidpathAlthough there may be a bias towards more up-market titles, the book sale at work contains all sorts. This looked like an airport thriller, but perhaps of a better sort, and I think that's how it turned out ( Read more... )

Book Review: The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas TalebI'm not sure why this turned up in the work book sale, as it's the 2010 edition; maybe it was filler in part of a package shipped for review, or discovered at the back of a cupboard somewhere. Anyhow, it had been on my Amazon list for quite a while ( Read more... )

Book Review: Kind of Blue - A Political Memoir, by Ken ClarkeI finished the previous book just at the right time for a Christmas present, and here it was. Clarke's autobiography follows a fairly standard pattern for a high-profile political figure, and it's written very much in Clarke's own laid-back style. It's easy to forget how many ministerial ( Read more... )

Well, 2016 has been rubbish, but let's try and pick out some more positive things from the year:

• Fiction - Doctor Who - Shada, by Gareth Roberts / Douglas Adams
• Non-Fiction - 1946 - The Making of the Modern World, by Victor Sebestyen
• Music - Prom 51 - the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop
• Museums and Exhibitions - Museum of the Americas in ( Read more... )

Most of the spoiler-free comment I've seen has been very complimentary about Rogue One; I'm afraid I found it adequate but uninspiring. ( Spoilers )

Book Review: Welcome to Just A Minute, by Nicholas Parsons
Oops, wrong panel game, though in fact there is an anecdote in here involving Nicholas Parsons, Lionel Blair, and Fanny Craddock. This book has two purposes - to explain the origins of Just A Minute, and to showcase Parsons' favourite excerpts from nearly 50 years of broadcasting. In fact, ( Read more... )

Book Review: China and America - A Time of Reckoning, by Charles DumasThere's a book-swap shelf at work and unsurprisingly, although there's a range of general material, there are quite a few more specialist books in the realm of economics and finance. This slim volume dates from 2007-8 (with an "appendix", in fact about half the book, extracted ( Read more... )

Book Review: The Secret History of the Blitz, by Joshua Levine
I imagine there are so many books on this subject it must be difficult to produce anything original. Whilst we may think of people sleeping on Tube platforms and iconic photographs such as St Paul's Survives, Levine probes earlier into the war, and beyond London, from a shooting ( Read more... )