Pigeons have long been regarded as pests, culled from Trafalgar Square at least once I believe, and regularly shooed from my garden when I have put out bread to attract an array of garden birds (I particularly like robins, blue tits, blackbirds, and am delighted when I see the occasional redwing or goldfinch) only to watch the pigeons try to hoover it all up before anyone else gets a chance.
Nurse at a Bus Stop The slow traffic takes a good long look. Jilted bride of public transport, alone in the shelter, the fireproof bin and shatter-proof glass scrawled with the cave-art of cocks and hearts. It’s late, Friday, the graveyard shift, you’re ready to dab blood from a split lip, to hold the hand of cancer till the line goes flat.
When I think I’ve read everything dystopian, particularly from the genre’s early 20th century heyday, another gem appears on my radar. Karin Boye’s Kallocain joins the ranks of Brave New World and 1984 in its depiction of an authoritarian superstate.
There is something admirable about the struggle to create an enduring monument to the theatrical Arts in any regional city.
My reading tastes are eclectic and sometimes, I feel the need to have a rest from some of the heavier, emotionally draining stuff I incline to, so made time for this easy-to-read romantic novel which provides pretty much what you would expect.
The Reading Agency’s ‘State of the Nation in Adult Reading 2025’ report reveals a growing reading crisis, especially among younger adults, who report distraction as one of the most common barriers to reading for pleasure in the UK.
The Reading Agency is inviting the people of Bradford to join a mass ‘read-in’ to mark World Book Night on Wednesday April 23, with one thousand Quick Read books handed out to the public for free.
When I picked up The Gorodomlya Island Project, I expected to learn something about Soviet rocket technology. What I found instead was a gripping Cold War narrative that blends historical revelation with personal redemption.
The Prologue of this gothic-flavoured novel sets a tone: women in a lunatic asylum are marching rhythmically down the stairs when a bird, trapped, tries to escape. It’s a clear metaphor for our protagonist’s situation.
Thatcher Her Majesty of backcomb and pearls. Blonde bombshell, iron-handbagged and twice the man. No milk monitor here; eyes sapphire and Caligula, hoarder of bituminous and DSS payments. Who is the mob? Who are the enemy within?
Kate Atkinson is living proof that persistence pays off. It took several years before she was recognised by the literary world but she persevered and the prizes which have followed are evidence of her authorial prowess. With several of her books adapted for television, she has proved herself also to be a worthy screen writer. Other than those featuring P.I.
The Lock-Keeper’s Daughter Take me away from this terrible place, very slowly, by barge, rising through the frothy lock outside my window like an old cinema organ. Ours will have been the most tacit of courtships, the most offhand of consummations as I step aboard from the vegetable patch.
To mark the end of Britain’s long-standing crime fiction convention, CrimeFest, organisers have compiled a new anthology, with proceeds of its sale going the Royal National Institute of Blind (RNIB) library. The anthology CrimeFest: Leaving the Scene is published by No Exit Press and features authors who have had a close relationship with CrimeFest over the years.
The arrival of Paul Carroll’s fine new novel couldn’t have been timed more judiciously: the first reading of the Assisted Dying Bill in Parliament has foregrounded a debate whose ethical complexity has simmered in the public imagination for many decades. The conjunction may be accidental but Carroll’s theme remains astonishingly serendipitous.
The ethical agency Cause UK, which has a reputation for supporting the arts sector, has announced a new partnership to help produce and promote a new literary festival in Yorkshire. The inaugural Whitby Lit Fest is hosted 6 to 9 November 2025 in venues across the seaside town.
There comes a point in the life of any biographer when the subject becomes more than a historical figure—they become a companion, a confidant, perhaps even a friend. For John Suchet, former ITN journalist and now Beethoven's most devoted chronicler, that relationship has spanned decades and yielded seven previous books.
To Be Mindful (Type A+) Consider the unthreatening men of blood donation, bobbing ‘round community centres and sports halls on any given Tuesday. They dish out Club orange biscuits and cheap squash in flimsy plastic cups, getting on with institutional good. Notice machines that beep, beep, pleasingly, cradles that rock with dark bags of warm generous plasma.
Hive Mother’s Prayer May the nights bring you pollen and sun-bright sheets, may the hours we rocked you still lull you to sleep, may they offer relief, may all your nights open with bee-bread and honey, release you from grief may they hold tired feet, may your head remember the warmth of my cheek, may your nights close in a glimmer of wings, may your belly keep its heat. {1…
Catastrophically ill-equipped though this reviewer is for taking a thorough critical view of a book that is rendered in Gaelic, Glaswegian Scots, French and English, the themes of Govanhill Mythology are so timely and so redolent of the wider zeitgeist that it would seem a dereliction to disengage.
On mute There is a video recording of the incident. Here is a woman on the station platform. She is lying down. Her face is covered. Her face is covered with a rag or it could be clothing. She is lying still. There are people standing around her some with phones. No one is touching her. There is a child holding a corner of her clothing. The child is crying. The tears look real.
Illuminations II We built and bombed Boche stalags on the sands, or hunted for beached starfish on the rocks and some days ended up all holding hands gripping the pier machine that gave you shocks. The current would connect. We’d feel the buzz ravel our loosening ties to one tense grip, the family circle, one continuous US!
The 2025 Writers' Award competition is officially open for entries! The Creative Future Writers' Award is the only free to enter national competition for all underrepresented writers: those who face barriers due to mental health challenges, physical or learning disability, neurodiversity, survivors, and those from LGBTQIA+, working class and/or Black, Asian and global majority backgrounds.
October Dawn October is marigold, and yet A glass half full of wine left out To the dark heaven all night, by dawn Has dreamed a premonition Of ice across its eye as if The ice-age had begun its heave. The lawn overtrodden and strewn From the night before, and the whistling green Shrubbery are doomed. Ice Has got its spearhead into place.
Waiting for Spring No song rides on the chill breeze this morning and the oak and hazel keep their buds tight, tucked up their sleeves like tiny hands. I’m counting the impatient days with only the nodding snowdrop to show for winter’s end. It can’t be long until the bracken uncurls to breathe the wild garlic and the bluebells play their blue notes under the wind-borne curlew’s call.
Nothing is better calculated to contradict a critical adult view of a children’s poetry anthology than the small person at whom the book is aimed.
Winter Morning Shyly coated in greys, blacks, browns - to keep us out of sight of the cold - we weren't expecting this this morning: sun and shadows, like a summer's evening, like summer teasing.
Unto Us A Child Is Born Triptych egg tempura on oak panels Traditional as a devotional aid, this triptych of the birth of Christ is re-presented in the modern idiom: pregnancy test in Mary's hand, Joseph in running kit, this is a low key Annunciation. In the central panel the Holy Infant, delivered by Caeserean section, is handed to his mother by an angel in scrubs.
Vera, Waiting She had prepared for a telegram prepared for what she would say to the Post Office boy. Prepared her retreat to her room, to slit open the envelope and allow the news to make a sortie into her mind. An assault anticipated. Yet when the news came, it was by telephone. And she was in Brighton, not Buxton – her dug-out two hundred miles away – her parapet bare of barbed wire.
The British class system that Tony Harrison spent many productive hours ‘banging his head against’, sustains, if not in the rigid hierarchical structures that had begun to creak by the time Richard Hoggart’s seminal post-war study, The Uses of Literacy, appeared, then in food banks, overflowing gaols, and masochistic political alignments.
‘Forareian’. Anyone recognise it? It’s the only way I can think of to spell it – as it is spoken - since I’ve never seen it written down. My mother-in-law was a southerner and one of the first people to let me know I had a northern accent (despite my being subjected to elocution lessons as a child).