Articles tagged Books:
Book Review: A Series of Unrelated Events by Richard Bacon
- 28 Dec 2013
I had intended to write this review last night but decided instead to watch The Inbetweeners movie on Channel Four. Someone suggested on Twitter that I should write this review using words from the Inbetweeners. In theory this would be clungingly possible. [See what I did the...
Book Review: Piers Morgan's Diaries: Shooting Straight
- 6 Nov 2013
I’ve never quite understood why so many people appear to hate Piers Morgan. I like him. I find him funny, witty, entertaining and, yes, often thoroughly irritating. People write about him as if he is somehow thick and has got to where he has purely by luck and good fortune. It...
Book Review: A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine - Tony Benn's Last Diaries
- 5 Nov 2013
Last Thursday I went to see Tony Benn to interview him for the LBC Book Club. Because I hadn’t reached the end of his book, I hadn’t realised he had moved out of his family home on Holland Park Avenue and had moved into sheltered accommodation round the corner. The interview w...
How Newspaper Book Serialisations Work
- 22 Sep 2013
Many people don’t seem to understand how newspaper book serialisations work, so let me try to explode a few of the hoary old myths that have been regurgitated in the last few days. Even journalists from newspapers which bid for the Damian McBride serialisation don’t seem to ge...
Why Is Alastair Campbell so Keen to Trash Damian McBride's Book?
- 21 Sep 2013
You know, the most amusing thing about the last 48 hours or so has been the emergence of Alastair Campbell as spinner-in-chief against Damian McBride. It’s most odd because most of the things Damian writes about in his book confirm all the things that Alastair says in his diar...
Damian McBride, Me and His Brilliant Book
- 20 Sep 2013
Four years ago I appeared on the Today Programme talking about Carol Thatcher and her use of the word ‘gollywog’. She had just been fired from the ‘One Show’ for having the temerity to liken someone’s hair to that of a ‘gollywog’. This is what I wrote on my blog at the time… ...
Book Review: Don't Bite the Apple by Luke Bozier
- 26 Aug 2013
This is a book about sex addiction and computer hacking, and how those two things led to one man’s life imploding in front of his eyes. That man is Luke Bozier, a digital politics specialist who advised Tony Blair but then incurred the wrath of the New Labour establishment by...
Book Review: DOMINION by C J Sansom
- 20 Jul 2013
If you are a fan of counterfactual history, and you wonder what might have happened in May 1940 had Lord Halifax become prime minister rather than Winston Churchill, then you will love this book. The author, C J Sansom, is a strange cove. he rose to prominence with a highly s...
Book Review: 'Strictly Ann' by Ann Widdecombe
- 7 Jul 2013
I first met Ann Widdecombe at Politico’s, the bookshop in Westminster I used to own, in April 1997. She came in and bought ten copies of Derek Lewis’s account of his time as director of HM Prison Service. She plonked them on the counter, I looked her squarely in the eye and ra...
Book Review: 'Goodfella' by Craig Bellamy
- 23 Jun 2013
Craig Bellamy is a player than opposing fans love to hate. It ought to be because he’s a bloody good player, but the real reason is that people think he’s just a bit of a nasty piece of work. It’s true. He can be, but this book shows there’s more to Craig Bellamy than the sna...