Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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RAJAR Q3 2026
This post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the many years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via…
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Big Picture
Since The Guardian’s revamp, they’ve had the opportunity to print a massive double page picture each day in the middle of the main section. There’s been some wonderful photography so far, and other pics like this one of the earth from space. So today I opened my paper expecting to see a massive double page…
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Sports Personality of the Year
Not the greatest of surprises that Freddie Flintoff won it. But I’m with Steve Cram on the merits of the runner-up, Ellen MacArthur, getting an award in this arena. I was in Stanfords earlier today where they have a fine selection of books on adventurers. And that’s the category that MacArthur belongs in – adventure.…
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Caroline Hawley leaving Baghdad
I see that BBC correspondent Caroline Hawley’s leaving Baghdad at the end of the year after two and a half years. There’s a nice piece by John Simpson in the BBC’s Newswatch section of their website. There are critics of “roof-top” journalism that can see correspondents stuck in the Green Zone just regurgitating stuff that…
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Oil Depot Explosion Coverage
I didn’t take my digital camera out and about with me today, but if I had, I could have taken some slightly unclear photos of a smoke filled northern sky. I didn’t hear an explosion at 6am this morning, although I did hear an alarm clock sometime around that time. Disappointing, since the explosion was…
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Kiss Her Goodbye
Yet another Hard Case Crime novel, and, like the Stephen King novel, this one is also has a contemporary setting. Not only that, but the contemporary setting is Edinburgh (and Kirkwall in the Orkneys)! Joe is an enforcer for a dodgy Edinburgh loan shark. Are there any loan sharks who aren’t dodgy? Anyway, everything changes…
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Holding On
I’ve just listened to a remarkable documentary about a competition that took place in an East Texas town earlier this autumn. A few years ago Channel 5 (as was) ran a seemingly bizarre reality series called Touching The Truck presented by Dale Winton. A large 4×4 was parked in Lakeside, or somewhere similar, and the…
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CSI – Ripped From The Headlines
Wow. I’ve just watched an episode from the sixth series of CSI and you might just have thought that the writers of the episode had watched episodes from Death on the Staircase. Because in this story, a man is suspected of murdering his wife who’s found dead at the bottom of the staircase with blood…
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Paradise
I was very impressed that the Åhleans department store stocked an entire section of books by Swedish authors. It was mainly made up of Henning Mankell novels, but having read all them, and wanting to read something Swedish I picked this up from the Stockholm based journalist Liza Marklund. This seems to be the third…
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Tainted Blood
Yes – another Scandinavian novel. Does Iceland count as Scandinavia? Indriðason is the man who’s just won the CWA Gold Dagger, and inadvertently caused them to change their rules regarding the language of first publication. This wasn’t the book that won the award – that’s still only out in trade paperback. But this is his…
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Going Postal
I believe that this is the thirtieth entry in the Discworld series, and that means that Pratchett has been publishing more than one title a year on average. I understand that he’s slowed down a bit more recently, but the guy’s a publishing phenomenon. This time around we meet Moist von Lipwig, who’s a cheat…
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The Colorado Kid
I guess that Hard Case Crime must have been over the moon when one of the kings of fiction deigned to write a novel for them. I’m also guessing that he’s so powerful a literary figure that he doesn’t have to worry about his publishers getting upset when he writes for another one. I’m not…
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Turkish Gambit
This is the third of the Fandorin novels to be published in English. I’m not all together convinced that they’ve been published over here in the same language as they were in Russia, since this one seems to follow on more from the first UK published novel than the last. In this instance our hero…
Hadrian’s Wall
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