Entertainment / Books

Film review: Jonah Hex

books.guardian.co.uk - The acclaimed graphic novel about the mysterious, scarred old West bounty hunter has become a muddled, inept film, says Phelim O'NeillEven if you didn't know how troubled this adaptation of John Albano's comic book was, with rumours of countless rewrites and reshoots, it's obvious something is drastically wrong here even before the opening titles are over. After we are introduced to gruesomely scarred semi-supernatural old west bounty hunter Hex (Brolin, in grisly prosthetics), there is a terrible expositional animated sequence; it's as if they simply forgot to film some key scenes. Otherwise, it seems like a bad case of lost nerve: Hex is never quite the bad-ass he is in the comics, while the plot attempts some clunky relevance as Hex hunts down a campy villain (Malkovich) who is making an olden-days weapon of mass destruction. It just gets louder and more nonsensical as it progresses, with Fox shoe-horned into as many scenes as possible.Rating: 2/5Josh BrolinJohn MalkovichAction and adventureScience fiction and fantasyComicsPhelim O'Neillguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Tony Blair on Obama and McCain | Richard Adams

books.guardian.co.uk - Tony Blair thinks the media got McCain and Obama the wrong way around in 2008, according to his autobiographyWhat did Tony Blair think of the 2008 US presidential election? Chris Brooke, who is valiantly live-tweeting his reading of Tony Blair's memoir, A Journey, highlights Blair's take, which comes on pages 512-513:It's one of the oddest things about modern politics. The paradigm imposed, usually by a particular media view, completely disorients the proper analysis. I used to smile at the way the Obama/McCain election of 2008 was framed: Barack was the man of vision, John the old political hack. One seemed to call America to a new future, the other seemed a stale relic of the past. This was a paradigm that determined the mood and defined the election.Actually, it was John who was articulating a foreign policy that could be called wildly idealistic for the cause of freedom. Barack was the supreme master of communicating a brilliant vision, but he was a practitioner of realism, advocating a cautious approach based on reaching out, arriving at compromises and striking deals to reduce tension. For these purposes, leave alone who is right. It's just a really interesting feature of modern politics that the mood trumps the policy every time.Tony BlairBarack ObamaJohn McCainUS elections 2008US politicsUS national book awardsRichard Adamsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Blair's job was done by 1997: to numb Labour, and to enshrine Thatcherism | Simon Jenkins

books.guardian.co.uk - In Downing Street, Blair never fulfilled his early promise and let Brown in. Now he can only emit a long wail of impotenceWho said books are dead? Did he blog or tweet, video or iPad? No, Tony Blair wanted to get a message across, so he wrote a book. He smeared the black stuff on trees, stitched it together and made people go out to buy it. Good for him.Blair's mildly engaging stream of auto-eroticism shows him memoirising much as he ruled. He uses the first person singular a million times. He stages everything. He fixes on a theme and controls the narrative. The intention is to smother an Iraq apologia in endless quotables on Gordon Brown and his emotional idiocy and general hopelessness. It is cruel, but has worked a dream.Blair was a politician of great talent, and a miserable prime minister. The service he did his country was considerable, but it was done by the time he took office in 1997. It was to anaesthetise the Labour party while he turned it into a vehicle to make him electable and his newly espoused Thatcherism irreversible, much as Attlee had made welfarism irreversible in 1945. The British left is still in denial on the subject.When the Social Democratic party was formed in 1981, an ambitious young Blair abused them as "middle-aged, middle-class erstwhile Labour", with only "lingering social consciences [to] prevent them voting Tory". When, a year later, Anthony Blair fought Beaconsfield, he was for CND, against Trident and for withdrawal from Europe. (None of this is in his memoir.)When Blair arrived in parliament in 1983, he was eloquent in defence of clause IV renationalisation: "not a question of reinterpreting it … but a question of giving effect to it". There should be no curb on trade union rights, and privatisation should be abandoned "here, now and for ever". When Nigel Lawson cut income tax to 40%, Blair demanded Labour increase it to 60%.By the end of the 80s, ambition had worked a wondrous change. Blair abandoned nuclear disarmament and subscribed to the EU. As employment spokesman, he declared that Thatcher's union laws should stay. He did a U-turn on privatisation. Unlike Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Brown, Blair saw himself as classless and placeless, at ease in Thatcher's world. He travelled to the US with Brown and, like De Tocqueville, returned mesmerised, in particular by Clinton's use of political charisma.When he became leader, Blair's self-styled "project" dared not speak its Thatcherite name, but it understood that success could lie only in capturing the middle ground, in the "electoral necessity of bourgeois ascendancy". New Labour should hang loose, talking about right and wrong, individual choice, community not state. Blair himself was unashamedly rightwing, espousing the nuclear deterrent and telling a police conference that "if we dare not speak the language of punishment then we deny the real world".Such idealism in a prince, as Machiavelli pointed out, was useless without power. Blair's memoir is as its self-regarding best in recounting how he re-engineered the Labour party so it could never again undermine its leader, as it had Gaitskell, Wilson and Callaghan. Where previous prime ministers had struggled to bend a monolithic party to their will, Blair set out to smash it.In 1996 Blair wrote that unions should have "no special or privileged place" in his party. "We will not be held to ransom by the unions. We will stand up to strikes," he assured the Sun, and he meant it. The bloc vote should go; the party conference should lose power over the manifesto; the national executive should be divorced from the shadow cabinet; even the holy of holies, clause IV, should evaporate.The party was torn to shreds as Blair scored victory after victory against "old Labour". He turned a 19th-century movement into a 21st-century presidential machine, puffed up with candyfloss vacuities such as "traditional values in a changed world". Blair's appetite for cliche was, and is, gargantuan.Blair never criticised Thatcher. In 1995 he lauded her as "a radical, not a Tory". He told the New York Times that Labour would be "unelectable" if it dismantled Thatcherism, one of the things "the 1980s got right". The lady returned the compliment, remarking during the 1997 election that he was "a man who won't let Britain down". She was the first VIP - before any Labour figure - whom Blair invited to Downing Street. He was obsessed by her good opinion, like Odysseus panting at the sirens' call but blocking his colleagues' ears.In office Blair was a true fundamentalist. He adored Thatcher's policies on law and order, refusing penal reform. He carried privatisation far beyond what she had tolerated, fuelled by his affection for high finance and private wealth. He mimicked Thatcher's belligerence in foreign affairs, loving to be thought "not wobbly". Even his "regrets" have a Thatcherite tinge: the foxhunting ban and freedom of information.The left's refusal to accept what Blair did to Labour is reminiscent of the Whig acceptance of reform in the 1830s. When Britain is experiencing radical change, it prefers to look the other way. Blair's conversion was so deft that his party bought the Thatcher ticket hook, line and sinker, but on the strict understanding that it was not mentioned.Needless to say, little of this is in Blair's book, though he does let slip a tribute to Thatcher's "character, leadership and intelligence" in smashing the unions. One reason must be that, while Blair understood Thatcherism's potency, he was blind to its shortcomings. He grasped the essence of his creed but could not see how to take it forward.Not for three decades has anyone in Britain charted a proper boundary between the public and private sectors. Blair noted that in 1997 Thatcher's public sector was "largely unreformed" and that, had Attlee returned, "he would have greeted it as an old friend". Yet he did nothing. He could change Labour ruthlessly, but quailed before the gods of public administration. This was despite having turned Downing Street into a furnace of centralised power. He and Brown tipped unprecedented quantities of money into the pockets of public servants, yet the quality of Britain's schools, hospitals and social services remains shocking.Blair blames much of this failure on Brown, but the failure was Blair's. He left Brown in charge, with his co-architect of madness, Ed Balls - who without apology now thinks himself equipped to run the country. Blair never had the guts to sack either of them. As a result, one of the brightest sparks to cross the political firmament since the war can emit only a long wail of impotence.Perhaps Blair is right, that Brown was his nemesis, a tragedy collapsed across the path of history. If so, a duo that could have created so much, and yet created so little, is just another might-have-been.Tony BlairLabourPolitics pastMargaret ThatcherGordon BrownLabour government 1997 - 1999Simon Jenkinsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

I write a nasty book. And they want a girly cover on it | Lionel Shriver

books.guardian.co.uk - Publishing's notion of what women want is dated and patronising. In my case it's like trying to stuff a rottweiler in a dressThe latest literary dust-up in America concerns the outsize critical admiration of Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom, the follow-up to his 2001 National Book Award winner The Corrections. Freedom secured two worshipful reviews from the New York Times in one week, the Book Review's lengthy cover essay drooling with such jaw-dropped awe that it was hard to read for the saliva stains. Franzen himself appears on the cover of Time, and Freedom sits in President Obama's stack of holiday reading.Fellow novelist Jodi Picoult ignited online fireworks last week by claiming that female writers never attract the same reverence as "white male literary darlings" like Franzen. Naturally Picoult risks the appearance of plain old envy. Though a skilful craftsman, Picoult may also lack the literary standing to make such a charge. Myself, I've yet to read Freedom, embargoed until this Wednesday, but it does sound like an excellent book, one I'm looking forward to.Nevertheless, Picoult has a point. A female novelist would never enjoy a Frazen-scale frenzy of adulation in America, which maintains two distinct tiers in fiction. The heavy hitters - cultural icons who often produce great doorstop novels that no one ever argues are under-edited - are exclusively male. Rising literati like Rick Moody and Jonathan Franzen efficiently assume the spots left unoccupied by John Updike and Norman Mailer, like a rigged game of musical chairs. Then there's everybody else - including a raft of female writers who keep the publishing industry afloat by selling to its primary consumers: women.Elaine Showalter did a bang-up job in the Guardian Review last spring explaining why American women are never credited with writing the Great American Novel while identifying female writers who deserve more acclaim. So in preference to singing yet more praises of the gifted Annie Proulx, I'll share an inside glimpse of how publishers are complicit in ghettoising not only women writers but women readers into this implicitly lesser cultural tier.With merciful exceptions, my publishers constantly send prospective covers for my books that play to what "women readers" supposedly want. Take the American reissue of my fourth novel Game Control, a wicked, nasty novel about a plot to kill two billion people overnight. The main character is a man, the focal subject demography. Yet what cover do I first get sent? A winsome young lass in a floppy hat, gazing soulfully to the horizon in a windblown field - soft focus, in pastels. Dismayed, I emailed back: "Did your designers read any of this book?" When I proposed a cover photo by Peter Beard of sagging elephant carcasses - perfectly apt - the sales department was horrified. Women would be repelled by dead animals. We settled on live elephants, but it was pulling teeth to get girls off that paperback.Or take the amicable difference of opinion I am having with my German publisher, since apparently this problem is also European. My latest novel, So Much for That, is told from two male points of view. Its subject matter - illness, mortality, and the fiscal depredations of American healthcare - is unisex, its tone furious. Yet what's on the cover? A woman, looking stricken. Male readers wouldn't be caught dead reading a book with that cover on the Strassenbahn.The titling of that novel also came up against stereotypes of my ostensibly all-female audience. The US sales department vetoed the original title, Time is Money, for "sounding like nonfiction", though fiction appropriating and subverting nonfiction titles is commonplace (nobody mistook Alison Lurie's Foreign Affairs for an international policy journal). It took me a while to discern the real problem: Time is Money was too direct, too aggressive, too in your face; it would frighten the girls away. This suspicion was confirmed when I suggested the Germans, with no equivalent of "so much for that", simply use my original title. Uh-uh. Zeit ist Geld is "too male and harsh". I admired my publisher's candour, if not his neutral substitute: The Better Part of Life.Publishing's notion of what "women want" is dated and condescending. In the era of Venus Williams, girliness and goo isn't the way to every woman's heart. Yet publishers presume that women only buy a book that looks soft, and that appears to be all about women, even if it isn't. Yet women, unlike men, buy books by and about both sexes.Granted, the marketing logic seems unassailable: in the US, Britain, and Germany, 80% of fiction readers are women. (Which mysteriously makes women look bad: those layabout ladies have nothing better to do than loll around and read. Yet if 80% of fiction readers were men, we'd assume that men are still far more cultured and better informed, while women squander their free time on mopping the floor.) Why appeal to the meagre male 20%?Simple: smart female authors who twig that their careers depend on writing solely for their own gender will instinctively narrow their subject matter. Meanwhile, gauzy covers with shy titles signal that the literary establishment needn't take this work seriously. Little wonder, then, that the language of extravagant regard in that New York Times Book Review write-up of Jonathan Franzen - "Like all great novels," Freedom "illuminates, through the steady radiance of its author's profound moral intelligence" - is rarely lavished on female novelists. Little wonder that admiration of Franzen's focus on "family as microcosm or micro-history" would invert to disdain should a woman choose the same subject: look, just another bint stuck in her tiny domestic world.When my novels are packaged as exclusively for women, I'm not only cut off from a vital portion of my audience but clearly labelled as an author the literary establishment is free to dismiss. By stereotyping my work's audience as self-involved and prissy, women-only packaging also insults my readers, who could all testify that trussing up my novels as sweet, girly and soft is like stuffing a rottweiler in a dress.Lionel Shriver won the 2005 Orange prize for fiction with We Need to Talk About KevinPublishingGenderMarketing & PRLionel Shriverguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Theresa Breslin: bringing the past to life

books.guardian.co.uk - In the fourth in our series of interviews with authors longlisted for the Guardian children's fiction prize, Michelle Pauli talks Theresa Breslin about writing historical fiction for a modern audienceHistorical fiction for teens may not be as in vogue as vampires right now, but for Theresa Breslin, the stories the past inspires can seem just as fantastical. The Carnegie-winning Scottish author has written more than 30 children's books, many of them tackling serious contemporary subjects such as bullying - but, recently it has been characters from centuries gone that have caught her imagination.Her latest novel, Prisoner of the Inquisition, which has been longlisted for the Guardian children's fiction prize, is set in 15th-century Spain. It was a time of tumult for the country: the throne was divided between two monarchs, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon; Tomás de Torquemada, the architect of the Spanish Inquisition, was at the height of his powers; and Christopher Columbus was about to set sail across the Atlantic."It was almost too good to be true," says Breslin, laughing down the phone from her home in Scotland. "If you had orchestrated this as a fiction story and gone to an editor saying, I've got a magnificent queen who was intent on reunifying the country, endless religious upheaval and an explorer, they would have said it was a bit much. But, of course, it's all fact."Prisoner of the Inquisition is narrated alternately by two teenagers, Zarita and Saulo, whose lives first connect when privileged, naive Zarita, daughter of a wealthy town magistrate, accuses Saulo's father, a beggar, of touching her in a church. He is killed and Saulo escapes, secretly pledging to take his revenge on Zarita and her family. His side of the story encompasses slavery at sea, an encounter with pirates and a burgeoning friendship with Christopher Columbus. Meanwhile, Zarita sees her life change completely as a result of shifts within her family and the impact of a much wider political force: the Inquisition. The two finally meet again at the court of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in the Moorish city of Granada, in a nail-biting showdown.In synopsis, it may indeed sound "a bit much". But, as in Breslin's other historical novels, which cover the first world war, Catherine de Medici, Leonardo da Vinci and the Borgia dynasty, the story is firmly grounded by her extensive research into the way people lived and loved during the period.Readers can safely lose themselves in Breslin's stories with full confidence that, while she may be weaving a fictional tale with fictional characters around real people who lived hundreds of years ago, the underlying historical base is sound. Her dedication to the period is borne out by the passion with which she talks about her lengthy research process."What I try to do - and I think this is the former librarian in me - is to get primary source material," she explains. "For instance, with Remembrance [Breslin's novel about the first world war, seen from a teenage perspective], I looked at an original journal reporting the Battle of the Somme that says 'we're winning and it's a glorious battle'. I also studied a military record of the men that were killed and what happened to the battalions. It all helps to let you know what people are thinking."But it's the smaller, personal touches that bring Breslin's historical worlds back to life. For these, she researches how people dressed, played, ate - and drank. "In the middle ages they must have been half-cut half the time," she laughs. "They couldn't really drink the water. It was too dangerous, so they would drink mead instead."She also touches on the importance of clothes as a marker of how people are feeling. In Remembrance, a moment of light relief amid the misery of the trenches is provided by a discussion on hem lengths.In Prisoner, meanwhile, Zarita puts on her nun's garb when she reaches her lowest ebb. She feels a sense of freedom as she pulls the hood down, puts her hands into the sleeves and sinks back into herself without distraction. The habit might be made of rough grey wool, but the character observes: "It comforted me more than if I were wearing lace and brocade … I was cocooned from the outside world."Yet, winnowing through libraries can only take a writer so far. "Ultimately, I really have to go there," she says. "Really, truly, it's not just an indulgence to get away from a Scottish winter. You need to go there and see the flowers in Andalucia, smell the sea, feel the sun on your feet when you walk through the palace of Alhambra."Travelling on location also led her to discover snippets of history she would never otherwise have come across. Isabella's tomb in Granada revealed a clue about the queen's (accurate) estimation of her intelligence, compared with her consort's.A helpful guide in the Hall of the Sultans, meanwhile, pointed out a secret gallery where the Sultan's female relatives would have been able to peer to keep an eye on proceedings. This discovery inspired a crucial scene in the story.Visiting the location where the book would be set also led Breslin to question how to tackle more gruesome events of the period (specifically the acts of the Inquisition) in a book for teens. The depictions of the techniques employed by the inquisitors horrified her. "There was one museum I had to walk out of," she says. "It was horrific."Consequently, while there are torture scenes in the book, with enough detail to make a weak-stomached reader wince, they avoid gratuitousness. For Breslin, though, it remained important to retain some details of the practices of the time in order to maintain what she calls "truth"."At the end Zarita is crying not just for Spain and for humanity, but also for herself, because she is going to be racked," she says. "I think if I hadn't shown a bit of the factual thing, that wouldn't be convincing. In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth."Bresling adds: "Remembrance was the same. It was barbaric, but if you sanitise it, it's not true. Equally if you gloss over it, it's not true. How do you handle it? It was very difficult to show what was happening and the effects it would have on someone's spirit - not just their body - and deliver that truth."Remembrance kicked off Breslin's move to historical fiction when she told her editor she wanted to write "something about world war one from a teenager's point of view, because it's going to be the war of the previous century". Her editor was doubtful.Following that success, Breslin said the historical figure she really wanted to write about was da Vinci. Again there were doubts. "It was in the days before Dan Brown and my editor said 'do you really think people would be interested in da Vinci?'" says Breslin, chuckling.She won't drop too many clues about her next book, except to say that "it's another historical queen" (and no, it's not Elizabeth). It's safe to say that Breslin's editor is unlikely to be doubtful this time.Guardian children's fiction prizeChildren and teenagersFictionHistoryAwards and prizesMichelle Pauliguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Chinese author Xie Chaoping detained after book criticises dam project

books.guardian.co.uk - Lawyer says writer exposed embezzlement and migrants' suffering during building of Sanmen dam on Yellow riverChinese police have detained an author for almost a fortnight following the publication of his book about forced relocations in the 1950s, his daughter said.Officers said they were holding Xie Chaoping, a former journalist, for "illegal business activities" after detaining him at his home in Beijing on 19 August, said Li Mo.Li said her father had just paid for the publication of his book, The Great Migration, which is about the construction of the Sanmen dam on the Yellow river.The book charts the struggles of hundreds of thousands of people relocated due to the project, and reportedly accuses authorities in Weinan, Shaanxi province, of embezzling money meant to compensate those affected.The 55-year-old writer has been transferred to a detention house in Shaanxi. Li added: "The charge doesn't make sense. My father didn't do illegal business. They arrested him for the book. My father just wrote the truth. He didn't just make up things, everything in this book has evidence. He didn't think there was anything wrong with the book. It is quite a shock for him to get arrested."Xie's lawyer, Zhou Ze, told the South China Morning Post he had been allowed to see his client, who seemed in reasonably good spirits. "Xie thinks he's being persecuted because he's disclosed embezzlement, local government wrongdoing, migrants' suffering and land disputes," said Zhou. "It is another case of abuse of public power to repress public scrutiny and a breach of freedom of publication."He told another newspaper that even if the book had been printed without official approval, it was the responsibility of the publisher, not the author.Li Wanmin, an activist who tipped off Xie about the story, said: "The book is an objective account of what has happened to immigrant peasants, a marginalised group among peasants." He said that some of the farmers had to move eight times and that many died of starvation during the great famine in the early 1960s.Another campaigner for the relocated residents said he taken several thousand copies of the book to Weinan in June, but that officials confiscated them, saying they were cracking down on illegal publications.According to a reporter at the Beijing News, Xie first tried to write about the corruption allegations in 2006, but officials told the magazine he worked for to suppress the report.His wife said he then began to collect more material on the issue and decided to publish a book himself. Flash magazine, in Shaanxi province, agreed to publish his work as a supplement if he paid 50,000 yuan (£5,000).David Bandurski, of the China media project at Hong Kong University, said that many historical episodes remained highly sensitive in China. But he added: "A lot of actions against individual publications or reporters are coming from entrenched local interests [rather than higher officials]. There are so many examples of history being tied in with local immediate interests. You don't have to stretch very far to see how this could be more than a case of remote history which could touch on [local] leaders."According to the English language Global Times newspaper, Xie's lawyer said the corruption allegations in the book related to residents who were relocated again in 1985.An official at the publicity department at the Weinan public security bureau told the newspaper that the investigation was continuing, adding: "I have as little information as you do."The Guardian's phone calls to Weinan public security bureau rang unanswered.ChinaChinese literatureTania Braniganguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Master manipulator: how Tony Blair is remaking his image | Jonathan Jones

books.guardian.co.uk - The former prime minister wearing a poppy in Jonathan Yeo's portrait was no coincidence. It was the first step in a deliberate plan to influence his political legacyIn January 2008, a portrait of Tony Blair by Jonathan Yeo was unveiled in which the former prime minister wore a poppy. Reviewing it for the Guardian, I was skeptical about the notion that, somehow, the artist had subversively caught his subject off guard or conned him into wearing this unmistakable reminder of the wars that have bloodied his reputation. Blair is an experienced manipulator of his own image, I opined: if he wears a poppy it is because he wants it that way. Would Blair, I wondered, one day find the words to match this apparently guilt-stricken image?Well, here come 700 pages of them. The quotations already published from his book, and the reactions to it, should remind us that Blair is one of the most virtuous - in Machiavelli's sense of the word, meaning effective - politicians of modern times. On the front page of yesterday's Daily Mail, a photograph homed in on Blair's eyes. Making them look icy, it seemed to unconsciously ape the "Demon Eyes" poster the Tories used against Blair in the 1997 election, in which he is portrayed with a gash cut through his face to reveal the devil within. The interesting thing about this visual echo is that the Tory campaign poster failed to damage Blair, back in the day.Words and images match - the Mail front page headline attacking Blair's "crocodile tears" seems hysterical and forced. The fact is Blair, in the quotes published from his memoir underneath the picture, sounds like someone who knows the enormity of ordering soldiers to die in a war. They are dead and he is alive. He knows that. At least admit these are articulate words: "I feel words of condolence and sympathy to be entirely inadequate. They have died, and I, the decision-maker in the circumstances that led to their deaths, still live". Where is the comparable quote from Margaret Thatcher about the Falklands, from Lyndon B Johnson about Vietnam, or even from president Obama about Afghanistan?I have no idea if Blair means these words, if his charitable gesture is sincere or tactical, if he really loses sleep, or if it makes a difference that he does. But Blair is remaking his own image faster than critics can deface it. I think you could already see, in Blair's decision to wear a poppy for his portrait two years ago, how he was going to get to grips with history.ArtTony BlairJonathan Jonesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Authors, like Oscar winners, should keep their acknowledgements short | Stuart Evers

books.guardian.co.uk - Why do writers whose prose is clean and clear turn into gushing Kate Winslets in the thank-you pages of their books?The title story of If I Loved You, I would Tell You This, Robin Black's debut collection, is a shimmering, skewed tale of domestic disturbance and urban disaffection. It's one of 10 glacially poised stories that stand out for their simplicity; that quietly dissect the minor dramas of life and love, and blaze with understated emotion. However, on finishing the collection something else stayed with me almost as clearly as the stories themselves: the fulsome four pages of acknowledgements at the end.Black stops short of thanking the baristas in the local coffee house or the manufacturers of the computer she uses, but it wouldn't have been a surprise to see them mentioned. Friends, fellow writers and her family are given long, involved thank yous explaining exactly why they are great critics, writers and/or friends. For someone whose prose is so lithe and without adornment, these pages seem gushingly unreal: as though a literary hybrid of Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet has wrested control of the keyboard.Acknowledgements are one of the few places in a book when a writer can break out of their fictional world and address readers in their own voice. This is something that perhaps is more powerful than we realise. While I know the text is supposed to be the most important thing, and I'm well aware that the biographical details of a writer's life should be incidental to the reading experience, the acknowledgement pages can have a subtle effect on the way I read a book.The best thing to do would be not to read them; to ignore those pages and stick with the story. But in moments of distraction I can't help flicking to the back to see whether I recognise the name of their editor, or if there will be gracious thanks to famous novelists or artistic grantors. I can't help but slightly judge an author by the way they acknowledge their debts: too effusive and they seem a bit needy and try-hard; too brief - a list of names in alphabetical order - and you run the risk of appearing cold and dismissive. It's probably the difficulty of treading such a fine line that makes me read long lists of names of people I have never met.Despite my enthusiasm for them, there is a sense of the juvenile about acknowledgements - they seem longer and more sweated over in debut novels and collections than in books by more established names, from which acknowledgements are regularly entirely absent. Where they do appear they are often to express thanks for "Big" Jim Marshall, the Texas Ranger who taught the author the ins and outs of surveillance techniques, or Dr Ahab O'Shaunessy who explained the history of sickle cell anaemia, or captain Bryce Jones whose experiences informed the Afghan section of this book - normally suffixed by that staple of acknowledgement pages "all mistakes are of course my own". These kinds of acknowledgements can often appear to have been given with one eye on letting the reader know exactly how much research has gone into their fiction.Let's be honest: it would most likely be safer for an author to eschew an acknowledgments page altogether and give the people they want to thank a bottle of wine and a copy of the book. But that somehow doesn't cut it when you've been writing a collection for years and have been helped immeasurably along the way. I can understand why Robin Black might want to pour her heart out to her nearest and dearest, but perhaps she might have done better by taking a leaf out of the rest of her book and keeping things clean and clear.FictionStuart Eversguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Kick-Ass 2: are fans in for a long wait?

books.guardian.co.uk - A sequel to the superhero hit has been greenlit, according to the writer of the original comic book. But doubts have been raised over the film's production scheduleKick-Ass was always rather nicely set up for a sequel, what with that open-ended denouement, so it's hardly surprising that Mark Millar, who wrote the original comic book, has been talking up a second film. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Millar said the film's success on DVD in the US, where it sold 1.4m units in its first week, meant the project was finally greenlit."The estimate is that Kick-Ass will do 100 to 150m on DVD based on the American sales, so it'll end up making a $250m (£160m) on a $28m investment," said Millar. "So it should be OK. The sequel's greenlit, we can go ahead and do the follow-up now. The first made so much compared to what it cost, it would be crazy not to."Millar's announcement, however, has been greeted with a degree of scepticism in the blogosphere, not least because Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jane Goldman are tied up with preparations for X Men: First Class. In a later interview with MTV, Millar said the film was "probably about nine months away from production starting, at the earliest".He added: "Matthew's got to do X-Men: First Class. He just wants to get X-Men done next year, then hopefully we'll just go straight into Kick-Ass 2. That's the plan."All of which sounds a little less concrete. And there's the small matter of Vaughn's comments immediately following Kick-Ass's release, when he seemed to indicate there would probably not be a sequel.Could Millar, who clearly stands to benefit from a second film, be over-egging the biscuit? Probably. Having interviewed him, he's a refreshingly candid chap, saying that film-makers attempting to bring less well-known superheroes to the big screen were "fucked", following the arrival of Kick-Ass's postmodern take. And this is a man who works extensively for Marvel Comics.The truth probably lies somewhere between the two positions. What we do know is that if Kick-Ass 2 does get made, it will likely centre on Dave Lizewski's encounters with a new breed of wannabe superheroes and supervillains, inspired by his adventures. The film will show Hit Girl struggling to lead a normal life, and I can't imagine there not being a prime role for Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Red Mist.Millar said in March that he was planning on writing the second book in April. "The idea of Kick-Ass was: what would happen if people in the real world tried to become superheroes?" Millar told IGN earlier this year. "The second one is: what if people tried to be bad guys as a reaction to the superheroes?Millar adds: "And it's just that simple: The same way these wee guys were contacting each other on Facebook and trying out superhero costumes, what if bad kids started to do this? You've got this horrible Clockwork Orange kind of scenario going on, where these kids are happy-slapping."They're out there with their mobile phones dressed up as villains doing horrible things to people, recording it and putting it online. And that becoming massively viral all over the world."It's a vivid image that one can imagine working well for Vaughn, if the sequel does end up being made. For me, Kick-Ass was an enjoyably throwaway, fluid and vibrant slice of comic-book silliness, which made great viewing on the big screen. I'd very much like to see a sequel. They'd better get a move on though - Chloë Moretz won't stay 13 forever, and a grown-up Hit Girl would rather defeat the object, don't you think?Action and adventureScience fiction and fantasyComicsJane GoldmanBen Childguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Quiz: Political memoirs

books.guardian.co.uk - Tony Blair's biography is flying off the shelves, but how have his political friends and rivals fared in the literary bear pit? Test your knowledge of political memoirs, from Margaret Thatcher to Mo Mowlam More... (Books)

Extract: Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt

books.guardian.co.uk - The opening pages of Rebecca Hunt's debut novel, longlisted for the Guardian first book award More... (Books)

Is physicist Stephen Hawking right that physics, not God, created the universe? | Poll

books.guardian.co.uk - In a new book, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking argues that the universe is the work of physics, not God. Do you agree? More... (Books)

How Tony Blair's memoirs line up against others in No 10 genre

books.guardian.co.uk - Churchill got a Nobel prize for his - but other efforts by former PM's have succumbed to score-settling and defensivenessWinston Churchill had the right idea about memoirs. "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it," he revealed during the second world war. Most former prime ministers set out with a similar ambition, though few prove as successful in setting the terms of debate as Churchill's heroic six-volume account of the war largely did for many years. It won him a Nobel prize for literature.Tony Blair is only the latest former occupant of Number 10 to try his luck. He has one advantage shared by Churchill and Margaret Thatcher: a lucrative market in the United States, a place where he, like them, is more admired than at home.Sales are only one test, and the awkward truth is that the memoirs of lesser politicians (minor figures with a good writing style and a ringside seat, such as Alan Clark or Chris Mullin) often prove more enduring. So do those of the also-rans of politics, less calculating characters such as Denis Healey, Rab Butler or Norman Tebbit.After enduring attack from all sides, former premiers are too keen to explain and justify; they tend toward caution, defensiveness, and an unwillingness to exhibit vulnerability. Blair has clearly made an effort to avoid such pitfalls. He even admits liking a drink.Rare indeed are the killer facts in such books, score-settling is more the norm.Sir Anthony Eden's three-volume Full Circle passed up the chance to tell the truth of the Suez deception. Harold Wilson's dull thousand-page The Labour Government 1964-1970 makes no mention of his domineering political secretary, Marcia Williams.Jim Callaghan's Time and Chance was modest and decent, like the man himself. So was John Major's The Autobiography, an unexpected bestseller for HarperCollins. It revealed a youthful affair with an older woman (but not the affair with Edwina Currie), and made him an estimated £600,000 against the £3m plus earned by Lady Thatcher's two volumes of score-settling, which sold worldwide.She published while Major was still in office but was circumspect not to criticise him too much. Clem Attlee, always modest and famously reticent, guaranteed his book, laconically titled As It Happened, was published while he was still Labour leader, its most lively passages discreetly cut in advance.At a likely financial cost (delay weakens market value), Blair waited until Gordon Brown lost power (as he feared he would) before revealing Brown has "zero emotional intelligence" and a temper. Others got in first. Ted Heath's The Course of My Life did not appear until 1998 when he had already said most of the unkind things he wanted to about Thatcher. But disloyalty or being boring are not the only risks. Money is another.Blair deflected accusations of blood money by giving all his proceeds (£4m is probably half what Churchill made) to a British Legion fund for injured servicemen. Just before his fall in 1922, Lloyd George got into hot water by making a deal worth £3m at today's prices to publish his memoirs and serialise them in the Sunday Times. In the event they appeared only in 1933, settling scores with Douglas Haig and other first world war generals the Liberal leader had been unable to sack at the time; they were permanently diminished as a result.Tony BlairWinston ChurchillLabourConservativesBiographyMichael Whiteguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God

books.guardian.co.uk - Physics, not creator, made Big Bang, new book claims Professor had previously referred to 'mind of God'God did not create the universe, the man who is arguably Britain's most famous living scientist says in a forthcoming book.In the new work, The Grand Design, Professor Stephen Hawking argues that the Big Bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity.In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new text, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, he said new theories showed a creator is "not necessary".The Grand Design, an extract of which appears in the Times today, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have created out of chaos."Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," he writes. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist."It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."In the forthcoming book, published on 9 September, Hawking says that M-theory, a form of string theory, will achieve this goal: "M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find," he theorises."The fact that we human beings - who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature - have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph."Hawking says the first blow to Newton's belief that the universe could not have risen from chaos was the observation in 1992 of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. "That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions - the single sun, the lucky combination of Earth-sun distance and solar mass - far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe, writing in his bestseller A Brief History Of Time in 1988, he said: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason-- for then we should know the mind of God."Hawking resigned as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University last year after 30 years in the position.Stephen HawkingPhysicsReligionScience and natureCreationismAdam Gabbattguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Ben Jennings on Tony Blair's A Journey and Iraq

books.guardian.co.uk - In the latest instalment of the cartoonist's showcase, Ben Jennings turns his eye to the publication of the former PM's memoirsBen Jennings More... (Books)

In praise of … Gone With the Wind | Editorial

books.guardian.co.uk - The response to a call for funds to restore dresses worn by Vivien Leigh show that fans of the film still give more than a damnThe true origin of the celebrated phrase "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", which Clark Gable so savagely directs at Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind, lies in the Indian subcontinent. There it was apparently customary to express indifference by saying that an object, an idea, or a person was not worth a "dam" - a "dam" being a small, almost valueless coin. The Hays Office, which policed American cinema in the era in which the film of Margaret Mitchell's novel was made, was obviously unaware of this etymology, or it would not have agonised over whether it should permit the use of what it believed to be a swearword. The line, the film, the film's cast, the book and its author all went on to become aspects of what has proved to be an enduring cultural monument. Like it or not, Gone With the Wind is for many people the main way in which the American civil war is remembered, as well as a window on Hollywood and its stars in the years before another conflict, that against Hitler, underlined Sherman's famous observation that war is hell. Atlanta today houses several shrines to the book and the film. But the appeal of both remains powerful across America and the world, as has just been shown by the response to a call for funds to restore dresses worn by Vivien Leigh in the film. It was oversubscribed within three weeks. Lovers of Gone With the Wind are obviously ready not only to give a dam, but to give quite a lot of dollars to keep the myth and all its accoutrements alive.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Tony Blair: Something to explain and to say | Editorial

books.guardian.co.uk - He may not have all the answers to the big questions posed in his beguiling and maddening book, but he has some of themTony Blair has written an extraordinary political memoir. He could hardly do otherwise. This is not a judgment on the quality of his prose, which is sometimes erratic. It is a statement of the politically obvious. Where some former PMs - John Major or James Callaghan, for example - wrote interesting and useful tomes that were more often put down than picked up again, others - most recently Margaret Thatcher and now Mr Blair - write as polarisers and protagonists. Mr Blair writes as what he himself is, a controversial leader and a continuing player. As he said to the Guardian in his interview this week, he believes he has something to say and something to explain. He wants the chance to be heard. He could not have written a boring book if he had tried. And he hasn't.Reactions to Mr Blair's book inescapably say as much about the person reacting as about the book itself or Mr Blair. Treat the last 48 hours as a media event, and it is something of a triumph for the author and his publishers. The headlines started on Tuesday evening, became a flood on Wednesday morning, dominated the media most of yesterday and get a second wind this morning. There will be a predictable aftershock in the weeklies and Sundays. The many who are resolute about not buying the book are all but certain to be outnumbered by the many more whose interest has been whetted. Good news for Random House and for the Royal British Legion.Treat Mr Blair's book as an account of a big political career and it largely depends on what you thought of that career in the first place. In most cases, if people are honest, that verdict is likely to be mixed (which does not mean evenly balanced) as opposed to monochrome. There can be admiration for a formidably intuitive politician - none better - who took over a four-time losing party and took it to three victories, rebuilt the public services and reinvested in the welfare state, who fashioned major changes in equality and human rights, who devolved power to Scotland and Wales and helped fashion peace in Northern Ireland, and who was fortunate (and perhaps skilful) enough to preside over a long era of general prosperity and optimism. Read his book in that light and one is reminded of a lot that is now overlooked.Against that, there is a charge sheet whose toxicity and seriousness in no way diminishes with the passing of time, headed by the catastrophe in Iraq, but pushed close by the live-now, pay-later approach to the credit boom, the insouciance towards growing extremes of wealth, the eager embrace of the most reactionary US president in memory, and a too often contemptuous approach to his party, the press, the law and the public ethos. Mr Blair's career was made up of all of those things. He had an opportunity no centre-left leader in this country has ever had, and the wounds caused by what he did, as well as by what he failed to do, with that opportunity are still raw. Read his book in that light and it is hard to see past so many disappointed hopes.All the same, inside Mr Blair's book there is something else. In his distinctive way, beguiling and maddening, his book poses some sustained big questions, while neglecting others, about the present and the future, not just the past. How should the modern world respond to terrorism? What should it do about the spread of nuclear weapons? How can Europe play an effective role in a world where power is shifting to the east from the west? How can the public services be prevented from declining into a second-class option for the less well off? How much government spending does a modern society need? And, not least, how do parties of the left win and sustain power in democratic post-industrial societies? Mr Blair has much to say on all of these questions. He may not have all the answers. But he has some of them. His book is a reminder that he has something to say as well as much to explain.Tony BlairLabourguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Tony Blair: He can still make us believe - and then, pages later, feel sick

books.guardian.co.uk - Amid torrid prose and Tony Blair's moral absolutes are truths and revelations that make A Journey impossible to put downNo political memoir has ever been like this: a book written as if in a dream - or a nightmare; a literary out-of-body experience. By turns honest, confused, memorable, boastful, fitfully endearing, important, lazy, shallow, rambling and intellectually correct, it scampers through the last two decades like a trashy airport read.You can't put it down. But then it is so badly written in parts that you can barely pick it up. Blair loved to describe his world as one of absolute contradictions, and what was true of his conference speeches is also true of his book.At times its great flaws are magicked away by his brilliance as a politician, the man who can make you believe. Then, pages later, you feel almost sick. There are at least three gushing sexual passages, more Mills and Boon than prime ministerial memoir.Yet the impressive thing for such a commanding figure, the only rival to Attlee in Labour history, is that he confesses to an absence of control. Government, as described in these pages, happened to Blair as much as because of him. Though this is surely true of all politicians, few are big enough to admit it.There is an underlying realism to his acceptance of weakness and eventual disappointment. This book is not by the "Bliar" of protesters' imaginations. It is by a man with a grasp of policy and an intellectual framework which he applied to power. The inexplicable thing is why he was a Labour prime minister, not why he was prime minister at all.Blair himself never answers the question. "After leaving Oxford I joined the Labour party," he writes, with no explanation why - as if it were as natural as taking friends for a pizza. Perhaps to him it was. But Blair's idea of Labour had nothing to do with the substrata of socialism embedded in Gordon Brown."I'm not a great one for the Establishment. It's probably at heart why I am in the Labour party," he writes. But having joined, and risen, he found Labour wasn't a radical movement, or at least what radicalism it possessed ran counter to his own. "I voted Labour in 1983. I didn't really think a Labour victory was the best thing for the country and I was a Labour candidate."He must have thought that again in 2010, if the tone of his postscript is any guide: it is the most politically toxic part of his book. We know all we want to know about Brown the grump; Blair says nothing fresh on this. But as to Brown the irredeemable statist, the roadblock to reform, as the Tories used to put it, he is revealing.Their shared government was riven by an ideological dispute, not just one of personalities, from the start. The disagreement is most explicit at the end: Blair's attack on "state spending dressed up as fiscal stimulus", his mockery of the resurrection of Keynes by people who like big government. This reveals him to be a man who now must see his natural home in the coalition.But he isn't just a stock rightwinger. He offers an apologia to Labour like a man penning a necessary tribute to a cuckolded partner, but somewhere inside beats the heart of a liberal.He had a radical instinct to smash up vested interests, and that was the best of him as prime minister as well as sometimes the worst.The book confirms that he was not shallow or empty, the actor of repute, but someone grasping for huge things that could never be achieved. It was Brown, he says, who "operated essentially within familiar and conventional parameters". Blair describes himself as the bolder and more significant man.Of course one consequence was Iraq, to which he devotes long and uninformative chapters. Suffice it to know that Blair thinks he was right and the war on terror both real and continuous. He won't persuade unbelievers on this.More telling are the small things. The weirdly chatty tone (one paragraph just ends "blah, blah, blah"). The banal opening lines to each chapter - so dire you wonder if he is playing Robert Harris's game from The Ghost and spelling out a secret message with them. The endless self-belief (and unwillingness to give others credit - John Major, for example, gets no thanks for starting the Northern Ireland peace process).And the flashes of truth: "The truth is, MPs were underpaid and expenses were used to top up income: but you can't say it". Spot on. So why did he do nothing about it?There are obvious absences and distortions. There are also standard grumbles, such as a sustained attack on the media - odd from a man who courted Rupert Murdoch and admits to "a grudging respect and even liking for him".But since that is what he thinks, he is right to say it. The book is redeemed by such truths. Blair has a world view and is unafraid to describe it, bigger and bolder than anyone else. You can say he was mad. You can say he was a flawed genius. But you can't say he didn't matter.Tony BlairPolitics pastLabourGordon BrownJulian Gloverguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Billy Liar - still in town

books.guardian.co.uk - Billy Liar, a story of smalltown frustration, captivated a generation, pre-empted the 60s - and even inspired Oasis. As the stage play returns, Laura Barton asks Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie why it endures'I don't think about Billy Liar very often." Tom Courtenay's voice hovers on the line. We have been discussing his upcoming holiday to the north-east coast, splashing about in the warm shallows of the present-day; at this detour into the past, he pauses, and retreats a little. "If I read it now, it would make me laugh," he concludes lightly, distantly. "But I honestly don't know why it's lasted. Who can say why some things are successful?"It is now 50 years since Keith Waterhouse's novel transferred to the stage, casting in its title role first Albert Finney and later, Courtenay. Published in 1959, Billy Liar has, over those five decades, enjoyed a rich and varied existence, remembered not only as a novel and a play, but also as a film (again starring Courtenay), a musical and a TV series. This Saturday will see it revived once more, in a lavish stage adaptation at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.Crucially, Billy Liar's longevity is not an example of a tale that is told and told again with a dulling faithfulness; rather, the long life of Billy Liar is a story of reincarnation, of each new generation seizing upon the tale afresh and making the story its own. Its influence may be felt in half a century of creative endeavour, in drama and literature and film, and, perhaps most keenly, in popular music: referenced, for instance, in the video for the Oasis single The Importance of Being Idle, and in a song by the Decemberists, and popping up, too, in many of Morrissey's lyrics, including the Smiths' 1984 hit William, It Was Really Nothing.Set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Stradhoughton, Billy Liar tells of a young undertaker's clerk named William "Billy" Fisher. Billy, still living at home with his parents, is bored with his small-town existence, and in an effort to bring a little colour to his life tells lies - from the trifling and relatively inconsequential (the goings-on in the mythical world of Ambrosia, for instance), to the overblown, compulsive whoppers (this rather loose grasp of the truth leads him to be simultaneously engaged to two women).Meanwhile, Billy dreams of moving away to the city and becoming a successful comedy writer - though he has yet to summon the courage to actually do anything about it. "Today's a day of big decisions," he announces at one point. "Going to start writing me novel - 2,000 words every day. Going to start getting up in the morning." And then he looks at his overgrown thumbnail. "I'll cut that for a start," he decides. "Yes . . . today's a day of big decisions." It is a story that is funny, and familiar, but also tremendously sad, and not without sweetness."It's terribly exciting, in lots of ways, to unearth this beautiful play, to unearth beautifulness every day in rehearsal," says Nick Bagnall, director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse production of Billy Liar. It is, he points out, now a year since the death of Waterhouse, and so a revival of the play (co-written by Willis Hall, who died in 2005) seems a fine tribute. And that it has enjoyed such longevity and so much reinterpretation should not come as a surprise, Bagnall believes. "The language is warm and muscular, it's tender, and honest. And the character of Billy Liar is one that we all have inside us."For all Courtenay's reticence, his passion for the character of Billy is still tangible. He took on the role at the age of 23, a young actor who had himself left Yorkshire to pursue his own dreams. "I'd seen Billy Liar more than once," he says. "I loved it. It was something I knew about. It was a graphic illustration of how we lived. Billy Liar was in every molecule of my body."Courtenay's own upbringing, as a working-class boy from Hull, was not wildly different to that of Billy. "It was such fun to talk in a language I could understand," he says of the broad, everyday talk found in Waterhouse and Hall's script. "The most graphic speech is the speech about being grateful," he remembers. "I couldn't get it out when I did it on stage . . ." Courtenay falls quiet for a moment. "Because I was always told about being grateful, too. I'm sure I'm the only boy from my primary school to have gone to university. I know I was the only boy on my street. But my parents wanted me to be educated. They didn't want me to work on the docks; people who worked on the docks would say, 'If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for my son!' But my father, he didn't want it to be good enough for me."To return Billy Liar to Yorkshire is a feat that has brought Bagnall much delight. "This area owns this play," he says firmly. Bagnall left Yorkshire when he was 16, hoping to pursue his own creative ambitions. "I think if I'd seen this play, then I'd have left the next day," he says. He recalls a scene from the play in which Liz, the most bohemian of Billy's girlfriends, tells him to leave town and follow his dreams. "She says to him, 'All you need to do is go to the train station and go.' And he says, 'Is it that simple?'" Bagnall sounds flummoxed. "I still feel it shocking that he doesn't go."In the 1963 film adaptation, directed by John Schlesinger, the role of Liz was played by Julie Christie. It was only Christie's third acting job; she filled the shoes of Topsy James, who was forced to leave filming when she became ill. "It was my lucky break," Christie recalls. "Without it, who knows what I would have been doing?" She remembers the film fondly, and also with a certain respect. "As a film, I think it was historically and socially very perceptive," she says. "It captured that strange period between the end of postwar austerity and the start of what became known as the 60s, with all the hedonism that involved and which my character represented. It was a grasping of freedom, a rejection of convention that she stood for and which people were all having to grapple with at the time. Billy - in the book and the film - couldn't quite make the break. What John did was capture that moment perfectly."It is that rejection of convention that perhaps lies at the heart of Billy Liar's enduring success. It was, of course, part of a wider movement, Billy sitting alongside the working-class heroes found in the Angry Young Men plays, novels and later, films, such as John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey and Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; works that challenged what Bagnall terms "the pretty, establishment plays, the plays that refused to acknowledge that we'd even been in a war". He compares Billy Liar to the famous shot from Kes, the adaptation of Barry Hines's Kestrel for a Knave: "Where he's trying to stick two fingers up at the establishment. It's kind of punk."Colin Meloy, lead singer and songwriter of the Decemberists, is in agreement. "Billy Liar totally embodies the rock spirit," he insists. "But it's also blessed with none of the earnestness of the 60s counter-cultural movement - let's tear it all down, with our tongues in our cheeks."Bombast and bravadoIn 2004 Meloy wrote a song he named Billy Liar that appeared on the Oregon band's first album. "At that time in my life I was just eating up all the Angry Young Men movies — it was really the peak of my anglophilia, and it's such a funny movie, and it's kind of revolutionary." The story of Billy struck a particular chord with Meloy. "I was in my mid-20s and like the Tom Courtenay character, working a dumb job - not as a clerk but in a pizza parlour. And, like him, I was chafing against authority, and burdened by an overactive imagination. The song I wrote is more about the spirit of the movie; it's about being a waylaid youth with too much time on our hands and not enough power. It's a paean to laziness."Oftentimes, the story of Billy Liar strikes me more like a song than anything else. Like so many rock'n'roll tracks, it is essentially a story about escape; about love and dreams, and the search for them both, and with them, too, the search for oneself. It is about telling stories with bombast and bravado and the half-belief that if you say it, it will become true. More, it is a story of youth, and of a generation coming to believe that it is different from the last. And perhaps this is why it is a story that has survived so well these past 50 years - arriving alongside a youth movement that recognised in Waterhouse's story something of its own spirit.Waterhouse wrote a sequel, but I ask Meloy what he thinks would have happened to the Billy in the play, a young man full of fire and vigour and ambition, yet too scared to get on a train. "How would Billy Liar have turned out?" Meloy laughs and thinks a while. "Well," he say, "I guess he would have turned out like the punk movement . . . you know, it kind of fizzled out." Billy Liar is at the West Yorkshire Playhouse from Saturday to 2 October. Tom Courtenay is in conversation with Laura Barton there on 10 September. Box office: 0113-213 7700.TheatreDramaKeith WaterhouseLaura Bartonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

The world according to Tony Blair

books.guardian.co.uk - Torture, sex with Cherie and the royal family: it's a real rollercoaster with the former prime ministerGoing upBlood sports missing the good old days when you could tear small furry animals apart? Set your hounds on an emotionless Scotsman instead. Gone to ground!Idealism As seen in George W Bush, a man of "genuine integrity" and "political courage". Now, which other famous statesman might want to be thought of that way?Grrr . . . pillow talk "On that night I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength. I was an animal following my instinct." This is an actual quote from the book, by the way.Appalling premonitions In which, for example, John Smith dies unexpectedly and the dreamer replaces him as leader of the Labour party.The contents of our stomachs Did we really want to picture Blair and Brown "like lovers desperate to get to love-making"?Going downTorture "I totally disagree with it," says Blair. So that's that cleared up.One of the Milibands Ed? David? One brother has "clear leadership qualities", which presumably means the other doesn't. If only they weren't impossible to tell apart . . .The royals The queen could be "a little haughty", apparently, while Princess Diana was "manipulative". Who'd have guessed?Hilarious tabloid fantasies That story about Cherie sharing a shower with her friend Carole Caplin? Just a "fable".Tony Blairguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Terry Pratchett: 'I'm open to joy. But I'm also more cynical'

books.guardian.co.uk - Discworld's creator on his new novel, living with Alzheimer's - and why he should be allowed to decide when to end it allWhen, not very long ago, Terry Pratchett's father was given a year to live, Pratchett père took it, on the whole, philosophically. Father and son had plenty of time to "have those conversations that you have with a dying parent", and to reminisce about his father's time in India during the war. At one point, said Pratchett, in last year's Dimbleby lecture, his father suddenly said, "'I can feel the sun of India on my face,' and his face did light up rather magically, brighter and happier than I had seen it at any time in the previous year. If there had been any justice or even narrative sensibility in the universe, he would have died there and then, shading his eyes from the sun of Karachi."If the universe refused to display narrative sensibility, then Pratchett Jr would: that moment returns early in his new novel, I Shall Wear Midnight, in which a gruff, essentially kindly old man is vouchsafed a vision of youth and sunlight (though, instead of Karachi, the sunbeams glint off a leaping hare) and expires as he describes it. Even Pratchett knows this is a tad too neat, however, so, this being Discworld, his fantasy kingdom on a flat planet sailing through space on the backs of four elephants who in turn stand on a giant turtle, Death makes a lugubrious wisecrack about it: "WASN'T THAT APPROPRIATE?"Pratchett, when he arrives at his idyllic local pub in Wiltshire, turns out to be full of this type of humour - deliberate, slightly coercive, very self-aware. He seems a man used to being listened to: his sentences unspool evenly, sometimes a shade irascibly, from beginning to end, often as anecdotes topped and tailed and full of random facts, gloried in for their own sake - annual expenditure on farmers' boots in the 19th century; the ubiquity then of shoe trees; did you know that in Victorian England, most of the women read and most of the men didn't?Partly, though, this is because he's been writing all morning: I Shall Wear Midnight, a young adult novel, was launched in central London at midnight on Tuesday, but, as has been the way throughout a career that has so far produced 50 novels (38 of them set on Discworld) and generated more than 65m book sales - Pratchett is already 60,000 words into the next book.And for the last two and a half years, ever since he was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer's, and lost the physical ability to write, he has dictated those words into voice-recognition software. At first, in fact, he talks to me about the machine as if I am a machine (which is not entirely unwarranted: there is a tape recorder sitting on the table between us). ". . . And the nice thing is, contrary to what you might initially expect, comma" - we both burst out laughing - "yes, sorry about this, full stop."Pratchett has announced that his new book will be the last in his Tiffany Aching series (Aching is a young witch), and the novel, a bridge between childhood and the adult world, is full of worldly darkness - death, domestic abuse, old women's corpses being eaten by their pets, depression. "I'm a fantasy writer," he says. "Called a fantasy writer. But there's very little, apart from one or two basic concepts in I Shall Wear Midnight, which are in fact fantasy. You have sticks that fly, but they're practical broomsticks, with a bloody great strap that you can hold on to so you don't fall off. And you try not to use them too often."Aching is, in effect, a young social worker, and much of her supposedly witchy wisdom comes simply from being near to people in the moments when others are not, or from making mistakes. At one point, in exasperation, she gets her familiars, the Nac Nac Feegles, to whizz around a depressed woman's very messy kitchen and clean it up - succeeding only in terrifying her."Tiffany's parents got it right," says Pratchett, sounding for all the world like a promoter of Cameron's Big Society: "mobilise the village to deal with [somebody like that]." Aching has First Sight and Second Sight (and occasionally third and fourth) - but they are, respectively, "seeing what's really there, rather than what you want to see," and "thinking about what you are thinking": self-awareness by other names.Pratchett knows there are strict rules about making things so dark when you are writing for children - "a child's instinctive grasp of narrativium [sic] is that this has got to end well" - but he is also very clear that, while his witch can take away physical pain (she draws it out into a ball, then dumps it), she cannot, and will not, take loss, sadness, or grief."I've lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff," says Pratchett. "That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said - one of the famous lady novelists - 'unhappy is the family that contains an author'?"He doesn't say it in so many words, but that must also be combined with grief for the loss of his ability to write longhand, or type with anything other than one finger at a time (although, weirdly, he is still perfectly able to sign his name — "the bit that knows how to sign my name is an entirely different bit of the brain"); the grief of knowing that while he may have years yet, most of his other mental faculties will go the same way. But probably not suddenly."Every day must be a tiny, incrementally . . . incremental . . . incremental . . . - he stumbled over a word; you must write that one down," Pratchett says with a dark, almost-laugh. (Having been a journalist himself, before becoming a PR in the nuclear industry and thence a novelist, he rarely passes up a chance to remind you that he knows how journalists work) ". . . incremental . . . change on the day before. So what is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you're hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference."The last test I did was the first where I wasn't as good as the previous time. I actually forgot David Cameron. I just blanked on him" - this time the laugh contains, what - a kind of ironic approval? "What happens is, I call it the ball bearing. It's there, it just hasn't gone into the slot." He cannot begin to do tests that require him to scribble shapes, but asked to list names of animals, "I industriously say more than you can possibly imagine" - you can just see the pleasure of the earnest nerd in school - "and we go on for a little while until she smiles and says, 'Yes, we know, we know.'"And then there was the time with dear Claudia with the Germanic accent - which is always good if someone's interrogating you - and she said, 'What would you do with a hammer? And I said, 'If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning. I'd hammer in the evening, all over this land.' And by the end I was dancing around the room, with her laughing. The laugh will be on the other foot, eventually, and I'm aware of that. But it shows how different things can be: I can still handle the language well, I can play tricks with it and all the other stuff - but I have to think twice when I put my pants on in the morning."How does it change his sense of self? "Well - no one's policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes. I think - this is going to follow me for ages - I'm open to moments of joy: the other day, it was just a piece of rusty barbed wire in the hedge. Something had grown over it, and the whole pattern, the different shades of brown, the red - everything made a superb construction. And I was just happy that I'd seen it. But then I think - and it may just be because I'm 62 - it's also made me more . . . cynical? About government. And more sure, which is why I'm doing the Dignity in Dying."For nearly as long as he has been public about his illness, Pratchett has been public about his wish to choose when he goes, and his puzzlement that British law does not see the sense of his position. "I feel embarrassed that people from this country have to go, cap in hand, to die in Switzerland. Apart from anything else, it makes it a rich man's - or a soon to be much poorer man's - possibility." And people have to go earlier than they intended. "Exactly."He has a lot of time for the law in Oregon, where doctors can give a terminally ill patient a "potion to take when life gets too bad. I believe something like 40% or more of the patients die without taking it. Which means that every day they're thinking, 'Hmmmm - today's worth living.' And then one day they don't, and they die. That seems to me a very human thing, and a very good thing, because they can think, 'OK, that's sorted, I've got the potion, now I can get on and try and get the most out of life.'"Ideally, Pratchett would like things to be even more official than that: there should be tribunals - here he leans forward, looking intently at me over his glasses - of mental health professionals, lawyers etc, all over the age of 45, who would question the patient and try to ascertain that no one was coercing them, and that the choice was not "a passing fixation".But that's incredibly difficult; in illness you're often dealing with depression. "Yes. Yes, I know. I know," he says impatiently. Of course he knows. "Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect. But anything is better than some poor half of a couple in some house, devising something with ropes and pulleys, saying, 'If he pulls this and we use that . . .' - that's obscene."Currently, that half of the couple can, in theory, be prosecuted for murder. At least with a tribunal, "it would mean that whoever is left behind is at somewhat less risk - they're probably still at some risk, but at least there would be some proof that the situation was there."Part of me wonders if the publicness of Pratchett's discussions might, on some level, be trying to achieve this too - getting us to act as an unwitting tribunal and witnesses, if or when the need arises. What does Lyn, his wife of more than 40 years, think of all this? "I think my wife takes the view that . . . Actually, I think in her heart of hearts she takes the view that a hand will come out of the sky with a big flask, saying, 'Just the stuff you were after.' I think she takes the view that, um . . . that she would look after me. And I have not said to her - I have absolutely not said to her - 'I want you to do this, or I want you to do that.'" What about his daughter (Rhianna, 33, a successful games scriptwriter and, as she describes herself on her website, "general narrative paramedic")? "My daughter thinks, 'If Dad wants it, that's OK.' I don't think she has any particular interest in seeing me lying there like a baby."That was certainly the way he felt about his own father. It was even, it seems, something his father wanted. Had it been legal, Pratchett says, and "if he could have sat up in bed and said goodbye, I'd have pressed the button. I wouldn't have been able to see for crying, but I would have considered that a duty." I Shall Wear Midnight is published by Doubleday at £18.99. To order a copy for £14.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.Terry PratchettScience fiction, fantasy and horrorFictionAlzheimer'sHealth & wellbeingAssisted suicideAida Edemariamguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Tony Blair's memoirs: Gordon Brown holds fire over old rival's criticisms

books.guardian.co.uk - Battle that dominated decade of Labour government reopened as former PM's draft of history becomes instant bestsellerTony Blair repeatedly assured Gordon Brown that he would not contest the Labour leadership, then resolved within minutes of hearing of John Smith's death to stand, telling Peter Mandelson "it's mine", the former prime minister admits for the first time in his autobiography.Blair reveals that even before Smith's death he was "straining at the leash", straying out of his policy brief and becoming more convinced that "something was missing" in Brown's ability to lead. He admits that he toyed with the idea of leadership before Smith's death in 1994, but told Brown he had his backing in order to avoid a battle.Blair's book, A Journey, gives fresh details of the depths of the struggle between the two most powerful men in the Labour government and reopens the wounds of the Blair-Brown era on the day the ballots were sent out in the Labour leadership election.He describes Brown as "maddening", lacking political instinct and having "zero" emotional intelligence.A spokesman for Brown said the former prime minister would not comment on the book. Some in the Brown "crew", as Blair describes them, sought to highlight the positive aspects of the two men's relationship.Ed Balls, a key Brown ally and leadership contender, said: "For all the tensions, difficulties and arguments which undoubtedly happened, [Blair and Brown] achieved great things together. I wish these memoirs could be a time for celebrating those achievements, not recrimination."Blair also used an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr to try to highlight the achievements the two men had made. "Gordon is somebody of enormous talent, ability, commitment. And in the end, his contribution was enormous. I mean he was a huge, solid figure for the government," he said.The leadership hopeful Ed Miliband said Blair and Brown clearly had a "rocky relationship" but that it was also a "creative" one, and urged the party to turn a page on the whole saga.Other leadership contenders attacked Blair's timing of the book's publication, on the day that voting began. Diane Abbott said: "I'm surprised Tony Blair couldn't have waited a decent interval before putting the knife into Gordon Brown. It's not helpful to the party at this point."Andy Burnham said: "As ballot papers land, Labour should be looking to the future. Instead, senior figures in our party are rerunning the battles of the past through this leadership campaign."The former home secretary David Blunkett claimed the pair were a "phenomenal force for good" when they were able to work together.He told Sky News: "I think with retrospect he [Gordon Brown] will probably write his own version of what happened in those early days and what was such a close relationship, a very close friendship, disintegrating into acrimony and recrimination … and that is one of the great sadnesses of the nation and of the Labour party. The two of them working together at their best were a phenomenal force for good."The Labour MP Michael Dugher (Barnsley East), a former aide to Brown, said it was "slightly unkind and unfair" for Blair to brand him in the book as a "strange guy" who lacked emotional intelligence.He told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "I think Tony Blair was a much better actor than Gordon Brown and maybe in this modern media age that counts for something. I think that is an unfair characterisation of Gordon Brown."He said the relationship between the pair had been compared to that between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, saying: "They were better together than perhaps they were individually."The book describes how Blair had an instinct that Smith would die, and that he, not Brown, who was the favourite, would become leader. But he dismissed it and promised to back Brown to avoid an argument. He admits that those assurances were "disingenuous" and on the day that Smith died he bumped into Mandelson in the Commons, telling him: "Peter, you know I love you, but this is mine. I am sure of it. And you must help me to do it."There was never a "deal" with Brown, Blair insists, setting out the conditions upon which he would stand aside and back Brown's leadership bid, but he acknowledges there was a "understanding of mutual interest". At the time he thought that meant he would stand aside after two terms, but he adds that "neither of us should have tried to predict the future". He goes on: "The truth is I couldn't guarantee it; and it was irresponsible to suggest or imply I could."Blair claims he and Brown reached the celebrated decision, announced in the week after their 1997 victory, to give the Bank of England independence simultaneously, but that he raised it first - going on to claim credit for the party's economic record in the first years of their government."In truth, too, as with the Bank of England independence, the broad framework on the economy, never mind anything else, was set by me," he writes. Today Charlie Whelan, a former key Brown aide who is now political director of the trade union Unite, broke a self-imposed "no comment" strategy to dismiss on Twitter Blair's suggestion that he was behind the Bank decision.His attacks extend to Brown's supporters. Recalling Douglas Alexander's allegiance to Brown - despite his own efforts to "wean him" off membership of Brown's inner circle - he writes: "But the Gordon curse was to make these people co-conspirators, not free-range thinkers. He and Ed Balls and others were like I had been back in the 1980s, until slowly the scales fell from my eyes and I realised it was more like a cult than a kirk."He didn't sack Brown, he says, because it would have led to civil war in the party. "When it's said that I should have sacked him, or demoted him, this takes no account of the fact that had I done so, the party and the government would have been severely and immediately destabilised and his ascent to the office of prime minister would probably have been even faster."He gives Brown credit for the "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" slogan that defined Blair as shadow home secretary. "Gordon, certainly in those days, would show a streak of genius," he writes. He recalls the heady days of their early relationship: "Our minds moved fast and at that point in sync."Offering an analysis of why their relationship collapsed, he writes: "The root of the problem was that he thought I could be an empty vessel into which the liquid that was poured was manufactured and processed by him."He recalls a tale of Brown getting accidently locked in a loo during their heated face-to-face talks about the leadership in 1994 and reveals he shouted through the door: "Withdraw from the contest or I'm leaving you in there."Tony BlairGordon BrownPeter MandelsonPolly Curtisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Tony Blair's A Journey becomes instant bestseller

books.guardian.co.uk - Waterstone's says autobiography has enjoyed 'unprecedented' sales for its genre on first day of publicationA Journey is already Waterstone's fastest seller ever in the autobiography and biography category. The chain said the book had "unprecedented" sales on its release this morning."We've never seen anything like this for a political book. It is rewriting what we expect this sort of book to achieve," said Andrew Lake, Waterstone's politics buyer. By 3pm yesterday, A Journey had sold more copies than Peter Mandelson's book, The Third Man, in its first three days. And the chain predicted that by the end of the day Tony Blair's book would outsell The Third Man's entire first three weeks."Mandelson's book was, at the time, the fastest selling political book Waterstone's had ever seen, but has now been eclipsed by Blair," said Lake."You cannot fault Mandelson's book for timing, marketing and content - it was brilliantly done - but Tony Blair has returned to show who really is the boss when it comes to New Labour. Mandelson may remain the prince, but Blair has reclaimed his title as king."The chain has the book on sale at half price, £12.50, while it was also available on Amazon yesterday at anything from £12.50 to its full price - and up to an astounding £99.99.Tony BlairLabourBiographyWaterstone'sBooksellersRetail industryAmelia Hillguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

The war and the cliches: the sofa syntax of people-friendly Tony

books.guardian.co.uk - The doggedly demotic tone of Blair's A Journey becomes strained only in the passages about Iraq. Needless to sayThe papers today were full of judgments and revelations culled from Tony Blair's political memoir, A Journey. But what about its style? Sources close to Tony Blair say that he is proud of his prose. The leak suggests that he wants us to notice how, as well as what, he writes. "Le style est l'homme même," declared the Comte de Buffon. Is Tony Blair's style his true self? It is not the Oxford-educated public-schoolboy, or the dapper Inner Temple barrister. But it is the man he made himself into: people-friendly Tony, ready with a language that anyone can get.Blair confesses that most political memoirs "are, I have found, rather easy to put down". This one will be different. In his acknowledgements the author mentions that he "wrote out each word on hundreds of notepads".This is handmade prose. Some slabs that might as well have been cut and pasted from policy documents, but most is new-minted and his own. It is chatty, surprisingly direct, and unafraid of cliche. He strains at leashes, finds issues a minefield, and avoids comfort zones (though not in his diction).Speeches do or don't go down a storm. Measures only scratch surfaces. Dealing with a legal problem, his mentor Derry Irving "was like the proverbial dog with a bone". Recalling John Major's pained grace in defeat, "I paid fulsome tribute to him the next day (though I'm not sure that didn't rub salt in the wound)". Blair's happiness with a verbal commonplace blinds him to the misuse of "fulsome" (= excessively flattering). Sometimes his unmisgiving readiness with a cliche is painful.Gathering to a judgment on Princess Diana, he comes up with: "She captured the essence of an era and held it in the palm of her hand."But mostly it is cheerily fluent.It is a distinct anti-literary style. Sentences begin "Funnily enough …", or "By the way…" , or "Needless to say …". He loves those redundant locutions (if it is "needless", why say it?) that your English teacher told you to excise. He rebuts arguments in bar-room manner. "Complete baloney"; "It's bunkum"; "That's cobblers" (the latter excited by the suggestion that politicians used to be nobler). His judgments are qualified with idiomatic self-deprecation - "maybe that's paranoia!", "Silly, isn't it".It is all about being colloquial: favourite phrases are "as I say" and "as I used to say". Blair likes to write as if he had the reader with him (on that sofa?). So, for instance, he recalls his reaction to euphoria of Labour supporters on election night. "I know this sounds completely bizarre but I even became slightly irritated by it all."Remembering how Tony Benn convinced Labour Callaghan had lost to Thatcher because he had been too rightwing, he shakes his head. "Weird, I know, but true."He cannot always keep it up: some passages on Iraq have notably strained syntax. But mostly he can, contriving a style to offend any purist and yet keep you reading. It does sound like him.Tony BlairIraqMiddle EastJohn Mullanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Borders sees sharp fall in revenue

books.guardian.co.uk - Borders book retail chain suffers sales fallThe continuing woes of the book industry were underscored today when the US retail chain Borders, which pulled out of Britain last year, said its losses had increased amid sharply falling revenues.Book retailers who have been struggling to compete with online rivals and supermarkets are now also facing the threat of digital books that have begun to appeal to a wider audience with the arrival of the iPad.In Britain the picture is little better and investors in HMV have begun to put pressure on the company to rid itself of Waterstones, the only remaining large book chain on the high street.Borders said like-for-like sales at stores open for more than a year had dropped by 6.8% in the second quarter. The company posted losses of $46.7m (£30.2m), a slight worsening of the $45.6m loss it recorded in the same quarter last year. Revenue fell 12% to $526m.US rival Barnes & Noble is also deep in the red and reported losses of $62.5m for its fiscal first quarter, ending in July.The company arrived in Britain amid great fanfare in 1998, promising to revolutionise book-buying, and opened a chain of 45 stores. But by 2007, Borders admitted it was considering a sale of the UK division. In the summer of 2009, it was acquired by a management buyout, but the new owners managed just another six months before going into administration.Borders also sold the stationery chain Paperchase in July for $31m in an attempt to shore up its finances.The US chain has launched its own website for physical sales and a digital bookstore in response to the growing demand for e-books that can be read on handheld devices; according to the latest figures around 6% of book sales in the US are now digital. Borders also plans to extend its range of electronic book readers for sale in store - it currently sells six different readers, including a co-branded device with manufacturer Kobo.The pace of the change in the market was illustrated in July when Amazon announced that sales of digital books on its US website had begun to outstrip hardback books for the first time in volume terms. Between April and June, the company claimed to have sold 143 digital books for its e-reader, the Kindle, for every 100 hardbacks, although it should be noted that many of the titles on the Kindle top ten were selling for as little as $1.16.The publisher Hachette recently said that the author James Patterson, whose titles include Along Came a Spider, had become the first to sell more than 1m digital books.But Amazon has also found itself under pressure and last month slashed the price of the Kindle in response to the popularity of Apple's iPad and the growing number of tablets computers arriving on the market.HMV has owned Waterstone's since 1998 and is fighting to turn the business around, as a matter of "urgency". The company is operating on paper-thin margins, last year producing £2.5m of profits on turnover of £500m from the chain of 300 shops.BordersE-readersiPadKindleAmazon.comBarnes & NobleWaterstone'sHMVUnited StatesDavid Teatherguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Digested read: Tony Blair A Journey

books.guardian.co.uk - WMDs, George Bush, Cherie and Gordo: Tony Blair's memoir in just 818 words!Title A JourneyAuthor Tony BlairPublisher HutchinsonPrice £25I wanted this book to be different from the traditional political memoir. Most, I have found, are rather easy to put down. So what you will read here is not a conventional account of whom I met. There are events and politicians who are absent, not because they don't matter, but because they are part of a different story to the self-serving one I want to tell!No, seriously guys, this is going to be well different. How many other world leaders use so many exclamation marks! And it is as a world leader that I'm writing for you about my journey. And what a journey! When I started in politics I was just an ordinary kind of guy. And you know what? I'm still an ordinary kind of guy - albeit one who has become a multi-millionaire and completely destabilised the Middle East!You know, I had a tear in my eye when I entered No10 for the first time in 1997, though it wasn't, as the Daily Mail tried to claim, because I was choked with emotion at how far I had come since I was a young, ordinary boy standing on the terraces of St James' Park, watching Jackie Milburn play for Newcastle. It was because Gordon had hit me. Ah, Gordon! He meant well, I suppose, in his funny little emotionally inarticulate way.I guess some of you will find it hard to believe, but I never really wanted to be a politician. But sometimes courage is about taking the difficult decisions and when Cherie said, "God is calling you to fulfil your destiny", I knew I had to listen. So it was with a heavy heart that I outmanoeuvred Gordon over the leadership of the party after John's death - and whatever Gordo says there was never a deal struck at Granita where he could take definitely take over after my second term. Because I had my fingers crossed!The first year in office was pretty exciting and it was great fun having my old mates like Anji in the office. (I'd tried to get in to her sleeping bag once when I was 16 but she kicked me out! Her loss!) The death of the People's Princess came as a blow - I always found the Royal Family a bit freaky! - but I had a real sense the public were willing me to succeed. A pity the same couldn't be said for the media who were only too willing to see the worst in the Bernie Ecclestone and Peter Mandelson affairs. Looking back, I feel bad about forcing Peter to resign. But at the time it was him or me. So what the hell!I find also that Mo Mowlam's part in the Northern Ireland peace process has been rather overstated. So to put the record straight, it was all down to me. The talks had reached an impasse and I said to Gerry and David, "Look guys, we're on a journey," and they said, "Cool Tony, We're with you."If only Iraq had been that simple. I know there are some of you out there who want me to apologise, but life isn't that simple when there's a war crimes indictment at stake. Look, I feel the deaths of our servicemen every bit as keenly as if the bullets had pierced me like stigmata, but sometimes one has to just stand up and do the right thing even if the evidence isn't there. OK, I will admit I did have a bit of a wobbly - Cherie had to give me big cuddles, know what I mean! - when it turned out Saddam didn't have WMD, but I honestly never lied about them. It was just one, small, teeny mistake and everyone tore me to pieces! Give us a break! And for the record I didn't always have a plan to go to war. The first I heard of it was when Statesman George - Top bloke! Top thinker! - phoned to say US troops were going in!I was pretty fed up when everyone failed to see what we had achieved in Iraq, but an audience with the Pope, who said, "It is you who should be baptising me", soon cheered me up. And I felt a sense of duty to protect the country from Gordon's incompetence. "You're just waiting until everything's about to go pear-shaped," he would yell. As if! It was only my darling John Prescott's desire to be out of the limelight as my deputy that prompted my resignation. Selfless little old moi!Yet, though I feel proud of my achievements and sad at the direction the Labour party is now taking, my journey is not over. It continues ever onwards into farce. May my blessings rain upon the Middle East!Digested read, digested A journey . . . along the path of self-righteousness.Tony BlairGordon BrownLabourJohn Craceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Scott Pilgrim vs The World fr Xbox 360 and PS3 | Game review

books.guardian.co.uk - Xbox 360/PS3; £10; cert 12+; UbisoftAnyone familiar with Edgar Wright's oeuvre (and especially Spaced) can't have failed to notice the director of Scott Pilgrim vs The World is a major-league video game obsessive, and the film itself rams that point home.Happily, this is not the usual game-as-merchandising tat - indeed, it takes an approach that should be made compulsory for all games publishers looking to cash in on Hollywood's enduring mass appeal. Instead of seeking to extract more cash from you than it would take to see the film, Scott Pilgrim vs The World joins the burgeoning ranks of the retro homages found on the Xbox Live arcade and PlayStation Network, and completely nails the ethos of those download services.Its mission alone deserves applause - to introduce a young, Twitter-fed audience to the joys of the 8-bit arcade era. Thus, it looks like Paper Boy and plays like Double Dragon (even supporting co-operative play by up to four people). In keeping with that era, its gameplay is gloriously unforgiving, eschewing checkpoints in favour of three lives which must be sustained for the duration of each of the seven levels, corresponding to Scott's inamorata Ramona's ex-boyfriends. Each level is long, relentless and utterly devoid of breathing space. Which gives you a commensurate sense of satisfaction when you progress.The gameplay couldn't be simpler, consisting of classic side-scrolling beat-em-up action in which Scott takes on hordes of aggressive Toronto locals. He can pick up objects strewn around the streets, such as baseball bats, bottles and even snowballs, to use as weapons, punch, kick, jump and counter. At first, it seems laughably simple, but subtleties soon manifest themselves. As Scott levels up, he acquires special moves, such as shoulder-charges and low kicks. He can enter certain shops on the streets on which the action takes place, in order to replenish health and preserve life for the ex-boyfriend boss-battle at the end of each level. And you soon learn how to time attacks so they chain, letting you deal efficiently with attackers without sustaining damage. Even when you fall victim to the occasional pile-on, some judicious button-bashing under the pile of bodies can send the whole gaggle of bullies reeling.Everyone you defeat yields coins, and there are surreal interludes in which you enter primary coloured parallel paths littered with references to games like Super Mario Bros, and in which you can shatter flying piggy-banks to stock up further on loose change - it is entirely appropriate that a game-of-a-film which, for once, represents an attractive purchase should feature flying pigs. And the boss-battles are tours de force, with each ex (often with the help of assistants) unleashing extravagant powers which must be countered using considerable tactical nous and precision. Edgar Wright would (and surely does) approve of this, and it will appeal equally to tweens and their forty-something dads on nostalgia trips back to their mis-spent youths.Rating: 4/5GamesXboxPS3ComicsSteve Boxerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Tony Blair's memoirs released

books.guardian.co.uk - The former prime minister is back in the media spotlight as A Journey hits shop shelves More... (Books)

Other world literature

books.guardian.co.uk - From total believers to complete sceptics, the author of Mirage Men selects books that are 'informative, entertaining, puzzling or all three at once'Mark Pilkington is a writer with a fascination for the further shores of culture, science and belief. He also publishes books as Strange Attractor Press. In Mirage Men Pilkington travels across America looking to explain his own UFO sighting. After scouring the subject's history and meeting former air force and intelligence insiders, Pilkington concludes that instead of covering up tales of UFO crashes and alien visitors, the US military and intelligence services have been promoting them all along as part of their cold war counter-intelligence operations.Buy Mark Pilkington books at the Guardian bookshop"The UFO arena acts as a kind of vivarium for a range of psychological, sociological and anthropological experiences, beliefs, conditions and behaviours. They remind us that the Unknown and the Other are still very much at large in our modern world, and provide us with a fascinating glimpse of folklore in action. A tiny few UFO reports also still present us with genuine mysteries."The first book about UFOs as we know them was The Flying Saucer, a 1948 novel by British former spy Bernard Newman. I'm not sure how many UFO books have been written since then, but I'd guess that it's well over 1000. Here, in chronological order, are 10 that I can recommend as either informative, entertaining, puzzling or all three at once."1. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J RuppeltAn insider's account of the crucial, early days of the UFO story, by the man who headed the US Air Force's official UFO investigation from 1951 to 1953. Ruppelt documents shifting Air Force attitudes to the phenomenon, which ranged from aggressive denial to apparent endorsement of alien visitation in an infamous 1952 Life magazine article. In a revised edition, published in 1960, Ruppelt was more dismissive of the subject. He died the same year, aged 37.2. Flying Saucer Pilgrimage by Bryant and Helen Reeve A charming glimpse into the early days of the UFO culture, when the lines between spiritualism, occultism and ufology were largely indistinguishable. The Reeves travelled the US in search of "the Saucerers", meeting many key figures of the time before making contact with real Space People via the wonders of Outer Space Communication (OSC) and a portable tape recorder. Many important questions are answered: How do we look to the space people? Do they believe in Jesus Christ? Is this civilisation ending?3. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky by Carl JungIt was only natural that the Swiss mystic and philosopher-shrink, fascinated by anomalous experiences, should turn his attention to the UFO mystery. Considering UFOs as a "visionary rumour" and a manifestation of the mythic unconscious, Jung compares the perfect circle of the flying disc to the mandala, notes the dreamlike impossibility of many reports and presciently recognises the deep spiritual pull that the UFO would exert over the next half century.4. The UFO Experience By J Allen HynekAstronomer Hynek was an air force consultant on UFOs for much of his life, and over time transformed from something of a Doubting Thomas to a St Paul. He's regarded as a saint in UFO circles, largely for this book, a sober yet sympathetic overview of the UFO problem that excoriates the US Air Force for their failure to treat the phenomenon seriously. Hynek devised the "Close Encounters" system for categorising UFO sightings, and has a cameo during the cosmic disco climax of Spielberg's blockbusting film (that's him with the pipe looking like Colonel Sanders).5. The Mothman Prophecies by John KeelMerging unconscious deceptions with deliberate fictions, many of the wilder UFO books would have even the most intrepid postmodernists cowering behind the sofa. Keel, however, was a two-fisted trickster who knew exactly what he was doing and this reads like Thomas Pynchon crossed with Philip K Dick channelling HP Lovecraft. In the late 1960s Point Pleasant, West Virginia was plagued by bizarre entities, UFO sightings and robotic, jelly-fixated Men in Black; Keel investigated only to find himself in too deep and the town doomed to real-life disaster.6. Messengers of Deception by Jacques ValléeAn intriguing, disconcerting book from one of the field's most progressive thinkers. Vallée, a French astronomer and computer scientist who worked with J Allen Hynek, became entangled in bizarre mind games while investigating UFO cults in the 1970s. Amongst others, Vallée encountered HIM (Human Individual Metamorphosis), led by "Bo and Peep" who would steer the Heaven's Gate group to their collective death two decades later.7. Report on Communion by Ed ConroyWhitley Strieber's Communion is one of the 20th century's great literary mysteries and Conroy's spinoff is just as curious. A hard-nosed investigative journalist, Conroy examined Strieber's alleged alien abduction experiences and odd life story while also researching the history of UFOs and its parallels in folkloric encounter narratives. In a testament to the power of UFOria and the allure of the Other, by the end of the book he's being buzzed by shape-shifting helicopters and wondering whether he too has had contact with the Visitors.8. Remarkable Luminous Phenomena in Nature by William CorlissOne of at least 18 hardback volumes of anomalies collected by this modern-day Charles Fort. Ball lightning (miniature, giant, black, object-penetrating and ordinary), bead lightning, lightning from clear skies, pillars of light, glowing owls, luminous bubbles, oceanic light wheels, earthquake lights, marsh gas, unusual auroras, glowing fogs. And that's just for starters. I love this book.9. The Trickster and the Paranormal by George HansenHansen, a former professional laboratory parapsychologist, provides illumination, insight and perspective on the wider paranormal research field, UFOs included. Drawing on folklore, anthropology, literary theory and sociology, Hansen points out the integral, destabilising role of Trickster archetypes in human society. While dwelling predominantly amongst its esoteric fringes, the Trickster can also be seen lurking in the corridors of political, military and corporate power.10. Out of the Shadows by David Clarke and Andy RobertsA rock-solid history of the UFO phenomenon in Britain by two of our most reliable and indefatigable researchers. Clarke and Roberts work from interviews and official documentation detailing everything from genuine aerial mysteries during the second world war (investigated for the RAF by the Goon Show's Michael Bentine) to the cold war follies of 1980's Rendlesham Forest incident. Serious UFO research as it should be done.Best booksguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Mark Pilkington's top 10 books about UFOs

books.guardian.co.uk - From total believers to complete sceptics, the author of Mirage Men selects books that are 'informative, entertaining, puzzling or all three at once'Mark Pilkington is a writer with a fascination for the further shores of culture, science and belief. He also publishes books as Strange Attractor Press. In Mirage Men Pilkington travels across America looking to explain his own UFO sighting. After scouring the subject's history and meeting former air force and intelligence insiders, Pilkington concludes that instead of covering up tales of UFO crashes and alien visitors, the US military and intelligence services have been promoting them all along as part of their cold war counter-intelligence operations.Buy Mark Pilkington books at the Guardian bookshop"The UFO arena acts as a kind of vivarium for a range of psychological, sociological and anthropological experiences, beliefs, conditions and behaviours. They remind us that the Unknown and the Other are still very much at large in our modern world, and provide us with a fascinating glimpse of folklore in action. A tiny few UFO reports also still present us with genuine mysteries."The first book about UFOs as we know them was The Flying Saucer, a 1948 novel by British former spy Bernard Newman. I'm not sure how many UFO books have been written since then, but I'd guess that it's well over 1000. Here, in chronological order, are 10 that I can recommend as either informative, entertaining, puzzling or all three at once."1. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J RuppeltAn insider's account of the crucial, early days of the UFO story, by the man who headed the US Air Force's official UFO investigation from 1951 to 1953. Ruppelt documents shifting Air Force attitudes to the phenomenon, which ranged from aggressive denial to apparent endorsement of alien visitation in an infamous 1952 Life magazine article. In a revised edition, published in 1960, Ruppelt was more dismissive of the subject. He died the same year, aged 37.2. Flying Saucer Pilgrimage by Bryant and Helen Reeve A charming glimpse into the early days of the UFO culture, when the lines between spiritualism, occultism and ufology were largely indistinguishable. The Reeves travelled the US in search of "the Saucerers", meeting many key figures of the time before making contact with real Space People via the wonders of Outer Space Communication (OSC) and a portable tape recorder. Many important questions are answered: How do we look to the space people? Do they believe in Jesus Christ? Is this civilisation ending?3. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky by Carl JungIt was only natural that the Swiss mystic and philosopher-shrink, fascinated by anomalous experiences, should turn his attention to the UFO mystery. Considering UFOs as a "visionary rumour" and a manifestation of the mythic unconscious, Jung compares the perfect circle of the flying disc to the mandala, notes the dreamlike impossibility of many reports and presciently recognises the deep spiritual pull that the UFO would exert over the next half century.4. The UFO Experience By J Allen HynekAstronomer Hynek was an air force consultant on UFOs for much of his life, and over time transformed from something of a Doubting Thomas to a St Paul. He's regarded as a saint in UFO circles, largely for this book, a sober yet sympathetic overview of the UFO problem that excoriates the US Air Force for their failure to treat the phenomenon seriously. Hynek devised the "Close Encounters" system for categorising UFO sightings, and has a cameo during the cosmic disco climax of Spielberg's blockbusting film (that's him with the pipe looking like Colonel Sanders).5. The Mothman Prophecies by John KeelMerging unconscious deceptions with deliberate fictions, many of the wilder UFO books would have even the most intrepid postmodernists cowering behind the sofa. Keel, however, was a two-fisted trickster who knew exactly what he was doing and this reads like Thomas Pynchon crossed with Philip K Dick channelling HP Lovecraft. In the late 1960s Point Pleasant, West Virginia was plagued by bizarre entities, UFO sightings and robotic, jelly-fixated Men in Black; Keel investigated only to find himself in too deep and the town doomed to real-life disaster.6. Messengers of Deception by Jacques ValléeAn intriguing, disconcerting book from one of the field's most progressive thinkers. Vallée, a French astronomer and computer scientist who worked with J Allen Hynek, became entangled in bizarre mind games while investigating UFO cults in the 1970s. Amongst others, Vallée encountered HIM (Human Individual Metamorphosis), led by "Bo and Peep" who would steer the Heaven's Gate group to their collective death two decades later.7. Report on Communion by Ed ConroyWhitley Strieber's Communion is one of the 20th century's great literary mysteries and Conroy's spinoff is just as curious. A hard-nosed investigative journalist, Conroy examined Strieber's alleged alien abduction experiences and odd life story while also researching the history of UFOs and its parallels in folkloric encounter narratives. In a testament to the power of UFOria and the allure of the Other, by the end of the book he's being buzzed by shape-shifting helicopters and wondering whether he too has had contact with the Visitors.8. Remarkable Luminous Phenomena in Nature by William CorlissOne of at least 18 hardback volumes of anomalies collected by this modern-day Charles Fort. Ball lightning (miniature, giant, black, object-penetrating and ordinary), bead lightning, lightning from clear skies, pillars of light, glowing owls, luminous bubbles, oceanic light wheels, earthquake lights, marsh gas, unusual auroras, glowing fogs. And that's just for starters. I love this book.9. The Trickster and the Paranormal by George HansenHansen, a former professional laboratory parapsychologist, provides illumination, insight and perspective on the wider paranormal research field, UFOs included. Drawing on folklore, anthropology, literary theory and sociology, Hansen points out the integral, destabilising role of Trickster archetypes in human society. While dwelling predominantly amongst its esoteric fringes, the Trickster can also be seen lurking in the corridors of political, military and corporate power.10. Out of the Shadows by David Clarke and Andy RobertsA rock-solid history of the UFO phenomenon in Britain by two of our most reliable and indefatigable researchers. Clarke and Roberts work from interviews and official documentation detailing everything from genuine aerial mysteries during the second world war (investigated for the RAF by the Goon Show's Michael Bentine) to the cold war follies of 1980's Rendlesham Forest incident. Serious UFO research as it should be done.Best booksguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Tony Blair the actor, Gordon Brown the grump? No, the split was much deeper | Julian Glover

books.guardian.co.uk - Blair's book shows he thinks Brown was very wrong on policyIn life, as in the index, Brown follows Blair. The result? Defeat, disaster and derangement according to the former prime minister's memoirs, which are in one sense a sustained answer to the most important question about their shared government. Did they disagree about policy, or personality, or both?Easy wisdom paints their relationship as a tragedy: two men, the best of friends with a shared ideological project, pulled apart by jealously. It was all a terrible clash of personality and the loser was Labour.Except according to Blair it wasn't like that at all. Yes, there is lots in the book to justify that old slogan the Democrats used against Barry Goldwater: "In your guts you know he's nuts." Brown was nuts, at least according to the Blair version (and he's surely right). "More like a cult than a kirk," he says of Brown's allies.But, as he says - repeatedly - Brown didn't lose because he was a bit weird socially. He lost because he was wrong.This insight will upset Blair's party (or is it former party?). Almost all of those still in it believe the financial crisis demanded the massive expansion of the state. They think the deficit was unimportant. They think tax rises were morally and economically correct. They turned against markets.And Blair thinks they were wrong about all of this. It's this that counts: not the fact that Brown was bad at small talk and chewed his fingernails.The frivolities of the relationship between the two men will probably dominate the immediate response to Blair's book. People will comb it for juicy details of their rows: Brown locking himself in a toilet (by accident) while the pair discussed who should be the next leader. Brown demanding Blair's job. Brown as "the combination of the brilliant and the impossible". But the appeal of this soon fades. What lasts - and matters much more - is Blair's sustained attack on Brownite ideology. "I felt sorry for the party," he says as Brown stages yet another inept coup to remove him. "It was going to be a disaster." Not, he adds, because Brown was unelectable as a man but because, underneath, Blair knew him to be just another reactionary socialist, addicted to "old style trade union fixing and activist stitch ups".Gordon, he writes, "operated essentially within familiar and conventional parameters". Yet he pretended to be a radical. Most of all, this applied to economics. The last section of his book - the bit Cameron and Osborne and Clegg will quote endlessly at prime minister's questions - repudiates almost everything about Brown's response to recession. Since this is the period Brown believes to have been his best - indeed he is writing a whole book about it - one can see that the intellectual as well as personal split between the two men is absolute.Blair denounces "state spending dressed up as fiscal stimulus". He mocks the distortion of Keynes's ideas by politicians looking for cover for their big government addictions. He points out that the state failed, as well as the market, through unfunded sovereign debt and poor regulation. And who was the regulator in Britain? Gordon Brown, of course.In the end, you either agree with Blair on this or you don't. I do. But the point is that the difference between the two men wasn't really about style - Blair the actor, Brown the grump. It was about policy. The split was always there. Blair saw it. He didn't dare act by sacking Brown, as he should have done. And now Cameron and Clegg are in power. Blair sounds content with that. Read his analysis of Brown the policymaker and it is not hard to guess why.Tony BlairGordon BrownLabourPolitics pastJulian Gloverguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Tony Blair's A Journey is hot ticket at booksellers

books.guardian.co.uk - Retailers predict high sales for former PM's political memoirAnd so the journey - well, A Journey - begins. Tony Blair's heavily embargoed, highly anticipated political memoir hits the shelves this morning, amid feverish predictions from booksellers.The book, running to over 600 pages, leapfrogged into top position in Amazon.co.uk's bestseller chart this morning from 11th place last night, overtaking bestselling books by Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer and Terry Pratchett. The online bookseller says it is on target to become its biggest-selling political memoir ever.Amazon.co.uk said that Blair's A Journey had generated 36% more pre-orders than Peter Mandelson's The Third Man at the same stage. It added that the book "is on target to overtake that title to become the most successful political memoir of all time on Amazon.co.uk" - news that will be welcomed by the Royal British Legion, to which Blair is donating all proceeds from the memoir, including his estimated £4.6m advance."Both books have performed very well and, perhaps unsurprisingly in a year when there has been a general election, we are encountering a strong appetite for books from the world of politics," said Amy Worth, Amazon's head of bookbuying.At Waterstone's - where Blair will sign copes of his autobiography on 8 September amid heavy security - A Journey was hovering in eighth place in its online bestseller chart this morning, while Foyles was predicting that the book would be the independent chain's bestseller of the week."Most bookshops have revised their expectations for A Journey, after such impressive sales for Peter Mandelson's book. Initial sales will be very high indeed and we expect it to be our bestseller this week, even on just four days' sales," said Jonathan Ruppin at the independent bookseller.But he was loath to go as far as Amazon in his predictions, saying that sustained interest would depend "very much on the content of the book". "Random House have been promoting it as 'frank' and 'honest' and there will undoubtedly be a great deal of debate as to whether it lives up to that billing," said Ruppin. "If it does, it should be one of the non-fiction bestsellers throughout autumn and Christmas; if it doesn't, interest is likely to tail off quite rapidly."The book will have to do very well indeed, however, if it is to outsell Margaret Thatcher's The Path to Power, which shifted an estimated half-a-million copies to become the highest selling British political memoir ever.A Journey is already the subject of some vitriol at Amazon.co.uk, where customer discussions entitled "Shameful", "Boycott this book" and "Tissue of lies" have all sprung up around it. More... (Books)

Frank Skinner's attack on free libraries is a bad joke

books.guardian.co.uk - The comedian's anti-intellectual values will not help the fight against those who think that free libraries are dispensableDo you believe in a well-funded, free library service? The comedian Frank Skinner doesn't. Writing in the Times last week, he sneered at old black and white images of cloth-capped workers educating themselves for free. He's a working-class lad himself, he reminded readers, and libraries never did anything for him. These dreary hangouts are just a big joke.I came across his column just after my daughter completed a superb summer reading programme run by Camden Libraries, which was singled out yesterday by the Reading Agency. There is a huge gulf between the reality of libraries using imaginative ideas to get kids reading and the stereotype Skinner's Times column sought to create. Apparently, he is happy to see a world of diminished literacy, full of people whose idea of mental stimulation is to watch him banter on the telly.Skinner rose to fame in an age when ostensibly adult, university-educated males affected to like nothing better than a game of fantasy football and to thumb through Loaded magazine, while artists were recording anthems for the lads. He is an icon to a certain kind of obsessive anti-snobbish and anti-intellectual stream of thought in British modern culture that has passed, in recent decades, for the wave of the democratic future. It's interesting to see him so clearly express the views of the philistine self-made man down the ages, because, as the coalition shows its true Tory soul in cuts no progressive can defend, we should be looking again at our lazy cultural values.The attitude that all cultural forms are equal, where watching a quiz show is as cool as reading a book and the Fourth Plinth is more fun than the National Gallery, will not help the fight against arts cuts. After all, from one point of view, Skinner is right. If TV comedy is as culturally worthwhile as poetry, who needs libraries? Only by rediscovering the deeper joy and liberation of serious culture can we find the right words to answer those who think libraries, or free museums, are dispensable.LibrariesMuseumsArts policyThe TimesJonathan Jonesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

The literary (anti)heroes of middle age

books.guardian.co.uk - Widmerpool, Anthony Powell's ghastly creation in The Dance To The Music of Time, is a spectre to haunt the middle agedA treat turned up on my doorstep yesterday: a new book called The Midlife Manual, by John O'Connell and Jessica Cargill Thompson. I say treat: with my birthday coming next week, it's all a bit close to the bone. I particularly enjoyed their notion of the midlife literary anti-hero. O'Connell (who reviews thrillers for our Review) and Cargill Thompson picked out Widmerpool, the character from Anthony Powell's 12-novel sequence A Dance To The Music of Time. They describe him thus:A classic type: the cowardly and mediocre yet ambitious idiot whom no one liked at school but who has, thanks to a combination of luck and opportunism, eclipsed you and all your contemporaries to become unthinkably powerful in his chosen sphere - often politics or the media. Every group has a Widmerpool somewhere on its periphery. He's the person you bitch about with your oldest friends after a long, long night out when you're too exhausted to hide the anger and disappointment that's eating you up. Because your Widmerpool never goes away. Indeed,. the degrees of separation between you and him may decrease alarmingly: your paths may cross at a wedding or reunion. When they do, he will patronise you to death. And you will always hate him.I especially enjoyed the reference as I am slowly (with great enjoyment but many deflections) working my way through the Powell. I am now on volume eight, The Soldier's Art. Widmerpool, back in volume one a faintly laughable, essentially friendless schoolboy famous only for his funny overcoat, is now Major Widmerpool. It is the second world war, and our narrator Nick, a mere second lieutenant, has been attached to Widmerpool's office as an assistant, in order to be, as O'Connell and Cargill Thompson have it "patronised to death" by his old school-fellow. It's a chilling notion for, as the authors point out, every group has a Widmerpool on its periphery. The great fear is that he is oneself.One of the many books I have been rereading between bouts of Powell is Persuasion. If you read Jane Austen more or less annually, as I have done since my late teens, you end up marking yourself against the characters. Oh reader, when I first read Pride and Prej I was Lydia's age. I am about to become older than the delightful Mrs Croft in Persuasion. I still hang on to Anne Elliot, though. A tender 27 she may be, but in modern money I reckon you can give her another 10 years. Persuasion is a very middle-aged novel, with its melancholic flavour and its acknowledgement that yes, you can make a grotesque mess of your life (the romance part I find much less satisfactory than the bleakly comic first three quarters of the book, essentially before one reaches Bath). It is true, however, that you can tell you are middle-aged when you start to empathise with P&P's Mrs Bennet: with what Sir Walter Elliot would call "the rapid increase of the crow's foot" comes a sense of sympathy with this character, written off as absurd in one's heedless youth. At least she is trying to save her daughters from a future of poverty. And she's certainly not getting any help from that husband of hers.ClassicsJane Austenguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

From the archive, 1 September 1930: Obituary: Dr WA Spooner

books.guardian.co.uk - Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 1 September 1930The death occurred at Oxford on Friday evening of Dr. William Archibald Spooner, who was for twenty-one years Warden of New College, Oxford.Dr Spooner was born on July 22. 1844, and was the son of a Staffordshire County Court judge. He was educated at Oswestry and New College, of which he became a scholar in 1862 and a Fellow in 1867. Ordained a deacon in 1872 and a priest in 1875, he became chaplain to Archbishop Tait in 1878 and was examining chaplain to the Bishop of Peterborough from 1809 to 1916. He became Warden of his college in 1903 and held that office till he retired in 1924. A lecturer and teacher of ability, he devoted himself to the college and its members.He published little, and the outside world knew him only from the scholarship of the well-known edition of Tacitus' "Histories" and his memoirs of Butler and William of Wykeham.But to a series of generations of his countrymen Dr. Spooner was known not for his administrative abilities nor his scholarship but for the "Spoonerism." A "Spoonerism" is defined as "a ludicrous form of metathesis or the transposing of initial letters to form a laughable combination."In 1879 it was a favourite Oxford anecdote that Spooner from the pulpit gave out the first line of a well-known hymn as "Kinkering Kongs their titles take."The anecdote is well enough authenticated, but according to most people who knew Spooner well that was the only "Spoonerism" he ever made - the essence of a "Spoonerism" being, of course, lack of intent, - though later when, thanks to indefatigable undergraduate and alas! graduates and dignified Fellows of colleges, the legends had become legion, he often used deliberately to "indulge in metathesis," to live up to his reputation.All sorts of stories, probable and improbable, were invented, the most of which have only to be heard to be recognised as unauthentic. Of the well-worn ones the best are those which made Spooner declare that he was leaving Oxford by "the town drain," that some unauthorised person was "occupewing his pie," that at a marriage it was "kistomary to cuss the bride," and that he was tired of addressing "beery wenches." Much better authenticated and not even a Spoonerism is his famous reply to a young lady who asked him if he liked bananas. He is said to have retorted, "I'm afraid I always wear the old-fashioned nightshirt."Although other famous men have been guilty of "Spoonerisms", it was the doctor who had to bear the brunt of most of them and to be honoured by having his name enshrined in a word that is a permanent addition to the English language.Words and languageguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Extract: Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer

books.guardian.co.uk - The first chapter of Basharat Peer's 'frontline memoir of life, love and war in Kashmir', longlisted for the 2010 Guardian first book award More... (Books)

Sitting, lying or standing: what's the pole position for reading?

books.guardian.co.uk - AbeBooks wonder if it's weird to read lying on your stomach. The answer is yes: everyone knows the side is best. Don't they?I don't mean to boast, but I think I have quite strong hands. Strong because they are forced, every night in bed, to hold up whatever hefty tome I'm currently reading (they generally seem to be long, the books I choose). It's an essential end to my day: I find I can't actually go to sleep unless I've read for at least five minutes, and I'll even do it when I'm somewhat intoxicated, words blurring and all - although in the morning I'll never remember what happened during the bit I read.Anyway, I've been moved to consider how I do it - not something I ever really thought about before - by the nice folk over at AbeBooks, who've been wondering if it's weird to read lying on your stomach, propped on your elbows (and yes, I reckon it sounds painful)."I unspokenly assumed other people read like this, too, until I mentioned to my coworker Julie that I had sore elbows because the book I was reading (Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden) was so good that I'd been reading a lot more per night than usual," writes one employee on the company's Reading Copy book blog. "She made a confused face, and when we got into it she informed me that when she reads in bed she reads on her side, propping her face/head on one hand."Other techniques mentioned at AbeBooks include sitting up against the headboard with some pillows, "scooching slowly down as I get sleepier and sleepier", and the bizarre pillow-under-the stomach approach, with the book propped against the wall.My technique is also lying on my side, but I prop myself up on a few pillows and hold the book in both hands. If it's a particularly large book I'll balance one edge of it on the bed. This can quite annoying, as the pages get caught on the bedsheet and my thumbs gets sore, but in general it's comfortable enough for me to stay in one position for ages - often until I fall asleep, glasses pressed into my face.I'd love to know how you guys do it - and also if, like me, your bedtime reading can differ substantially from your daytime. I might well continue with whatever reading the day has brought, but quite often I'm in the mood for something easy, something I've read before, something which soothes me off to sleep. At the moment, my bedside table carries the eclectic mix of Jack Vance's Tales of the Dying Earth, Mary Stewart's The Wicked Day and Andrew Motion's 1987 biography of Keats. The thriller I'd been reading during the day, Linwood Barclay's Never Look Away, was too scary for the night - particularly as I'm home alone.Anyway, what's your position on this?Alison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

My legal hero: Atticus Finch

books.guardian.co.uk - The Alabama single father's principles have inspired thousands - and somehow become a point of national controversy in the USIt's almost a cliche to say that Atticus Finch is one's legal hero, like saying you like good chocolate or high thread count sheets. Still, I am one of many thousands of people who probably would not have gone to law school were it not for the fictional hero of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, a book that turned 50 in July. I'm not alone on this. Civil rights lawyer Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center says Atticus Finch is the reason he became a lawyer, and the name Atticus has soared up the rankings for popular baby names in the past few years, no doubt because of the straitlaced attorney's status among law graduates.While a handful of grumpy critics have recently taken against Finch for his failure to be more like Thurgood Marshall in the face of his famous defeat at trial, most of us still believe him to be everything a truly great attorney should be: a defender of the voiceless and downtrodden, a protester against mob rule, and the patron saint of hopeless legal causes. The Alabama single father who famously defended a black man, Tom Robinson, who was falsely accused of raping a white woman in the Jim Crow American south, has stood the test of time despite the fact that Atticus is almost too eloquent, ethical, honest and forbearing.As a high-school student encountering Finch for the first time, I was shattered by his quiet moral certainty, his commitment to non-violence, and his electrifying gift for cross-examination. He represented the rule of sanity over hysteria, principle over passion, and tolerance over fear. Oddly enough, as I've grown older, I've also come to admire his skills as a parent, a professional, a member of his community, and even - anachronistic as it may sound - his dedication to work-life balance as the single parent of two children. Atticus never stops teaching me about the need to integrate your moral, professional and family lives, even when the pressure to separate the two is tremendous.But above all, as a human, I always return to what may well be the defining line in the book, Atticus's life instruction to his daughter, Scout. As he explains, "If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." In summer 2009, and again this July, the United States was roiled by debate about Barack Obama's promise to appoint a supreme court justice who embodies this quality of "empathy". Scores of critics asserted that judicial empathy is the same as judicial bias; that judges are at their best when they coldly and mechanically apply the law. There is no place for climbing inside anyone else's skin as a judge. There is only truth and cold fact.How strange it is, that we have come to a place in the national debate about justice when Atticus Finch's mild admonition to his daughter to try to walk a mile in someone else's shoes has become the definition of dangerous judicial activism. While Atticus still has much to teach lawyers about race and violence and prejudice and the rule of law, I have also come to think of him as the patron saint of patient, quiet listening; a quality to which all of us ought to aspire.Dahlia Lithwick is a senior editor at Slate, and in that capacity writes the Supreme Court Dispatches and Jurisprudence columns.Harper LeeDahlia Lithwickguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Why demon heads of children's fiction are role models for trainee teachers

books.guardian.co.uk - Roald Dahl's Miss Trunchbull or Gillian Cross's Demon Headmaster demonstrate the exercise of power, study findsThey may be sadistic figures who hate children, but a study suggests that the savage portrayal of headteachers in children's literature possesses a grain of truth and may even be helpful when it comes to training teachers who aspire to lead schools.Characters like Miss Agatha Trunchbull, from Roald Dahl's Matilda, or the Demon Headmaster, from the sequence by Gillian Cross, can teach children to think about power and how it can be used for malign purposes, Professor Pat Thomson, director of the centre for research in schools and communities at Nottingham University school of education, has found.The study of 19 fictional headteachers found that nine are portrayed as evil or authoritarian, a further six are remote figures of power, and just one - JK Rowling's Professor Albus Dumbledore - is a positive role model.The study traces the origins of school stories to 19th century British fiction which - in stories aimed at boys - focused on the muscular discipline and militarism required for empire building.The books in the study were published between 1975 and 2009, and included Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events as well as Matilda and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.Many of the books show power can be used corruptly, according to Prof Thomson.Sometimes this can have a contemporary, political twist: in The Inflatable School by Peter Wynne-Willson, the "evil, messianic" Mr Stemple plans to turn his school into an academy sponsored by a business with whom his family has a profitable relationship.Miss Trunchbull is one of only two female heads in the books studied and is described, as "formidable and repulsive". Thomson says Matilda's triumph over Miss Trunchbull - who is replaced by the forgiving Miss Jennifer Honey - as "designed to show the benefits of the gentle use of pastoral power".In a study to be presented to the British Educational Research Association's annual conference at Warwick University today, Thomson says the books' willingness to encourage children to think about power may help to make the stories more truthful than many adult discussions about school leadership. The books encouraged children to take responsibility and overturn unreasonable social conventions. The stories also acted as cautionary tales, warning that children who made the wrong choices must learn to be responsible.Children were encouraged to acquire self-discipline "not because of the need for adult citizens to serve God and empire as in the traditional school story, but rather because the … modern citizen needs to serve and save themselves in a world where adults are often fallible, self-serving and myopic, and sometimes venal, corrupt and brutal."Power is often regarded by real headteachers as a dirty word not to be discussed,says Thomson, while serious texts on school management often avoid identifying the head's central task as the exercise of power. Children's books could be used as part of school leadership courses to address this gap."Children's stories come clean about headteachers' work in ways that mainstream educational leadership texts often do not," Thomson concludes. "The implied reader of children's books is a child who recognises that power can be used wisely and to ethical ends - or not; who understands that pupils can use their individual and collective power to challenge authority."Children and teenagersTeacher trainingTeachingRoald DahlJK RowlingHarry PotterFictionJeevan Vasagarguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)

Tony Blair: quotes from A Journey

books.guardian.co.uk - From banking to foxhunting, the former prime minister gives his views on his choices when in powerOn the banks crisis'The biggest danger was a view that people would want the state to come back into fashion - I didn't think that'On the third way'I'm still a third way advocate … not in favour of either the big state or the minimal state'On Gordon Brown'Look, towards the end it got extremely difficult and there's no point denying that'On Iran'I would not take a risk of them getting nuclear weapons capability. I wouldn't take it'On Iraq deaths'Do they really suppose I don't care … don't regret with every fibre of my being'On Labour'I feel the most enormous debt of gratitude to the party and huge loyalty to it. I just want it to win'On the future'If Labour defaults to attacking "Tory cutters and Lib Dem collaborators", it will not be elected'On foxhunting'Yes, the ban was [a mistake]. I didn't quite understand, and I reproach myself for this'On Gordon Brown'Analytical intelligence, absolutely. Emotional intelligence, zero'Tony BlairBankingFinancial crisisIranIraqGordon Brownguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Books)