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Readers Club
If you enjoy my books, there’s every chance you may enjoy the books I enjoy reading, and that I may enjoy the books you read. So here’s where we can share our favourites and explain what makes them special.
Readers Club
If you enjoy my books, there’s every chance you may enjoy the books I enjoy reading, and that I may enjoy the books you read. So here’s where we can share our favourites and explain what makes them special.
The Last Enemy
To get Book Club going, my favourite book is The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary. It was published as Falling Through Space in the US. I first read it at Oxford, and Hillary’s story begins during his time at Oxford immediately before WWII. He is determined to become a...
A great autobiography – Seven Pillars of Wisdom
My next favourite book is Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E Lawrence. My father fought in WWII, firstly in the Western Desert. His officers had told him that it was the greatest book written about desert warfare. One day I must get around to recording my father’s...
Creative Writing – The Seven Basic Plots
I’m going to go non fiction next, with The Seven Basic Plots: why we tell stories, by Christopher Booker. I had just begun the Open University’s creative writing course. My first assignment had been a short story which remains one of my wife’s favourites. However my...
The Man Who Died Twice
I must have heard Richard Osman advertising his second book on ClassicFM dozens of times. I can’t remember exactly how it went. Something like: there are murders, mafia and Colombian drug barons, diamonds, drugs, spies, laughter and tears. I didn’t doubt the laughter....
You Never Can Tell
No, not the Chuck Berry song, the play by George Bernard Shaw. Claire and I went to see it years ago. It was probably at the Theatre Royal in Bath, but could have been London. Edward Fox was playing the waiter, William. He was brilliant, of course. What Shaw does with...
What connects Alexander Dumas, Bob Geldof, and Rock Hudson?
I connect them. In late 1986 I spent three months managing the refurbishment of the cooling tower on the Port Sudan Oil Refinery. I had a team of five Irishmen, two Scotsmen, and dozens of Sudanese and Nigerians. Surrounding the refinery millions of people were...