Parade’s End Book 1 Review: Some Do Not…

The best thing about pretty much anything set in the World War I period, be it books, movies or TV programs, is what you might call ‘the set’, or ‘the world’ the characters inhabit. Breakfast rooms and drawing rooms and dining rooms with shiny wooden paneling, fashionable wallpaper, chandeliers and gilt mirrors, Chippendale armchairs, fresh…

Kick Ass: Tyrion Lannister

Take every cutesy or not-so-cutesy stereotype about dwarves that you can possibly imagine, from Gimli son of Gloin chopping up orcs to Mulch Diggums unfastening his bumflap and chuck them in a heap: Tyrion Lannister sends them all packing in a towering inferno of Lannister crimson with a decent rally speech thrown in for good…

Kick Ass: Elizabeth Bennet

Kick ass is a new series of stuff I’m going to be writing in praise of people from TV who, well, kick ass, from BBC to HBO and everyone in between. I will start with a classic. Name: Elizabeth Bennet Show: Pride and Prejudice (1995, BBC) Played by: Jennifer Ehle Elizabeth Bennet is the heroine…

Musings on the new trailer of Star Trek Into Darkness.

There hasn’t been as much speculation flying around the many great kingdoms of Science Fiction since River Song’s reign of awesome on Doctor Who that (sadly) came to an end last year. No sooner had the Star Trek franchise been so incandescently reborn in 2009 that a veritable deluge of debate started about the sequel,…

My review of The Hobbit

The Hobbit has always had a gentler, more humorous tone to it than The Lord of the Rings, the reason being that it was originally intended for children. You can see it if you think about it: fifteen main characters, most of them dwarves, on a heroic quest to recover their stolen treasure from a…

Reflections on my old copy of The Hobbit

The Hobbit means something different and equally special to every kid who grew up reading it, or even better, having it read out loud to them. An ancient copy of the book is sitting on my desk as I write this: it’s been sello taped together twice (once by me at the age of seven,…