orwell 2+2=5…

I went along to the Watershed again this morning (11am showing – for old retirees like me!)(surprisingly, there must have been an audience of some 80-100) to see Raoul Peck’s film about the Nineteen Eighty-Four novelist.
Obviously, one appreciates that going to watch a documentary film about George Orwell isn’t going to be a bundle of laughs(!) – particularly when we have a madman like Trump ‘in charge’ of a significant portion of the western world - and so it proved. Listening to Orwell’s prose (read by Damian Lewis) from his published works, letters and diaries is a sobering experience (albeit strangely invigorating). I don’t think I’d been fully aware that he’d written his ‘1984’ masterpiece when he was so close to his death (the book was published in 1949, he died the following year).  
It’s a very impressive film.
Obviously, with all footage available of past+present totalitarian/scary regimes, the documentary was spoilt for choice as far as illustrative examples were concerned. Orwell actually predicted the rise of AI and, of course, we now have the internet when it comes ‘information’ availability (and, with it, ‘fake news’ and propaganda). The documentary also includes present-day videos involving the likes of Trump, Orban, Modi, Netanyahu and Putin. No doubt, Orwell would have just nodded and said “I told you so”!
Overall, while I thought the documentary film was excellent, there are lots of gaps when it comes to some of the somewhat controversial aspects of Orwell’s life (eg. his anti-Semitic views in his younger days) and so there were times when I almost felt I was being ‘manipulated’ and that perhaps I wasn’t being given a more balanced view of things (but, hey, don’t get me wrong – I’m on Orwell’s side!).
It was a very powerful film and yet, somewhat predictably, also a pretty depressing one. It left me feeling very sad about how things might pan out in the coming years – not my future, of course, but my children’s children’s futures.
Oh for a simple, beautiful world of decency, integrity, honesty, respect and love.

march 2026 books…

Penguin Modern Poets: Jackson, Nuttall+Wantling: First published in 1968 (Moira bought our copy the same year)… so, 58 years on, I’m not quite sure that the word ‘Modern’ in this Penguin series still applies! Once again, I read this book out loud to myself as one of my early morning routines. A real mixture of styles and, perhaps inevitably, some seemed somewhat dated… but enjoyable nonetheless.
Falling In Love (Donna Leon): When the world has lost its marbles, it’s probably time to read another crime novel(!)… and, of course, if it takes you to Venice in the process, then so much the better. This is another Commissario Brunetti story (I like him as a character… and his references to family life etc). This one involves an opera superstar (well used to adoring fans) at La Fenice in Venice one over-the-top anonymous admirer who inundates her with dozens of bouquets of yellow roses… in her dressing room and inside her locked apartment. She begins to fear for her safety and calls in an old friend. Enter Brunetti. Another enjoyable read.
Train Dreams (Denis Johnson): This is our next Storysmith bookgroup choice (which we’re reading and then seeing the film at 20th Century Flicks). First published in 2012, this novella tells the tale of a 1920s railroad worker, Robert Grainier. He’s an ordinary man – uneducated and unambitious, but a dependable worker – initially working preparing huge felled spruce trees for transportation down from Washington State. But it’s a fragile existence in the wilds of the frontier amid a world of bewildering changes. Indiscriminate, destructive forest fires are commonplace – and his wife and daughter fail to survive one of them). Grainier builds a makeshift shelter by the site of his destroyed home and falls into a grief that runs its long course, redefining him in the process as something of a recluse. Later, his dogged struggle is eased somewhat when he acquires a horse and wagon – which allows him to undertake odd jobs in the neighbouring town. It’s a book about nature, survival, sadness and grief. A tough, but rather beautiful book (I’ll be fascinated to see what the film version conjures up).
Paradise (Abdulrazak Gurnah): This is our next Blokes’ Book selection. This is a novel (first published in 1994) about an African boy's coming of age, a tragic love story, and a tale of the corruption of traditional African patterns by European colonialism. As a 12-year-old, Yusuf (in the decade before WW1), is sold by his father in repayment of a debt. From the simple life of rural Africa, Yusuf is thrown into the complexities of pre-colonial urban East Africa - a world in which Muslim Africans, Christian missionaries, and Indians from the subcontinent coexist in a fragile, subtle social hierarchy (with some communities fighting each other; trading safaris going badly wrong; and all this alongside the trials of adolescence). By the time he’s 18(?), Yusuf begins to comprehend the choices required of him but, just as he decides on the need to break free from his servitude under his so-called Uncle Aziz (“he isn’t my uncle!”), the German colonial forces invade and, instead of finding true freedom, a traumatized and desolate Yusuf chooses to run after the retreating German military column… and, almost certainly into a new form of bondage. A multi-layered, powerful novel about Africa on the brink of change. Hauntingly beautiful.
Legion (David Harsent): More early morning poetry. I came across Harsent poetry for the first time last month (‘Salt’) and was determined to read more of his work. This is a collection (first published in 2005) of various accounts of conflict from an unnamed war which, in a cruel irony, I started to read on the day the US+Israel launched bombs on Iran. Powerful - and frequently bleak - words that underline the starkness, pain and indiscriminate nature of conflict. Much food for thought.

sirât...

I went along to the Watershed again yesterday (it had been a few weeks since my last cinema outing!) to see Oliver Laxe’s film Sirât. I’d noticed that the film had been nominated for two Oscars (Best International Feature and Best Sound) and so thought ‘I’d give it a go’. I got to the cinema 15minutes before the show started and decided to check on Peter Bradshaw’s (from The Guardian) film review – as I often do – only to find that he’d given it a mere 2-star rating. Nevermind, I thought, I’m here now!
Set in the dusty mountains of southern Morocco, a father (Luis) and his son have arrived at a rave (miles from anywhere) searching for Mar - daughter and sister - who vanished months ago at one of these endless, sleepless parties. Hope is fading, but they push through and follow a group of ravers heading to one last party in the desert…
Well, although it wasn’t quite my kind of music, I can well understand why the film had been nominated for ‘Best Sound’ (Kangding Ray’s suitably rave-like soundtrack was intoxicating… and very loud!) but, after a while, as the story unfolded, I started to ask myself “is that it?”. I could imagine a group of drug-induced film executives sitting around a conference table and discussing what would make a suitable film… music, hippies, drugs, mountains, deserts, beaten-up buses and people dying? Really (I thought)??
I’m afraid I came out at the end of the film feeling somewhat underwhelmed (understatement!).
I don’t normally do this but, in the circumstances (and the fact I have little to say when it comes to any kind of assessment), I’ll leave you with Peter Bradshaw’s words: “…Well, the dual narrative possibilities and consequences of Mar’s discovery or non-discovery fade away into nothingness as the story disappears into the sand, as does the question of whether the hippies and Luis could conceivably learn from each other. In their shock and despair after the tumultuous events that follow, they take psychoactive substances and dance to electronic music thumping out of their speakers. The film’s doors of perception remain closed. Sirāt is a path to nowhere, an improvised spectacle in the Sahara; it is very impressive in the opening 10 minutes but valueless as it proceeds, and a pointless mirage of unearned emotion”.
You can’t win all the time (or am I just a boring old codger?!).

february-march 2026 books…

Gwen John (Alicia Foster): I read this book prior to attending the exhibition of the artist’s work at the National Museum, Cardiff – and it proved very useful. Although I had long been an admirer of her work, I knew only rudimentary facts about her life. Like her brother, Augustus, she attended the Slade School of Fine Art from the age of 18 – which unlike the Royal Academy, for instance, allowed male and female artists to work and study together relatively unimpeded. What I hadn’t realised was that, from 1904 until her death in 1939, she went on to spend most of her time in Paris… and, indeed, was Rodin’s lover (and frequent model) for some 10 years! I had imagined her as being something of a recluse (‘famous for painting solitary women’), but this was far from being the case. Towards the end of her life she embraced an ardent Catholicism. A useful, fascinating book that filled in LOTS of gaps in my knowledge about Gwen John and the background to some of her beautiful paintings.
The Impossible Fortune (Richard Osman): Two admissions: a) I’m appalled that ‘celebrities’ who make shed loads of money doing ‘other things’, decide to become writers, make shed loads of more money while aspiring writers struggle to make ends meet, and b) I have to admit that Osman is a very clever, gifted author! Ridiculously, I realise that this is the fifth ‘Thursday Murder Club Mystery’ that I’ve read… and, just like the others, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this “warm, wise and witty” novel (as Val McDermid has apparently described it). I love all of the Murder Club’s characters (especially Joyce!). Another very pleasurable read.
Salt (David Harsent): I came across this book of poetry at our local £5 Bookshop. I’d never previously come across the author but, slowly reading his poems out loud to myself (as you do!) as one of my early morning rituals, I came to really enjoy his ‘way with words’. The book’s dust jacket provides an apt description: “The poems in this book are a series, not a sequence. They belong to each other in mood, in tone and by way of certain images and words that form a ricochet of echoes – not least the word ‘salt’”. I rather loved it and will seek out more of Harsent’s poetry in future.
Magic In Mossthorn Bridge (Alice Broadway): Exciting to be reading a new book by our very gifted author daughter (she’s a wonderful story-teller)! The book’s cover describes it as “a sweet and cozy small-town romance” – which, on the face of it, is really not my ‘scene’(!)… and yet I found it quite compelling (I read it in 2 days!). The setting is the town and community of Mossthorn Bridge in the north of England. After 10 years’ absence, a young woman returns to run her aunt’s music shop. But there are issues: a) her ‘first love’ still lives in the town (their relationship hadn’t ended well), b) her old flame is the son of the town's biggest landlord/landowner (who thinks he rules the town), c) their respective families despise each other and d) there’s magic involved (which rather complicates things!!). The two young people are forced into taking part in a community play (a very selective retelling of the town's history – written by the aforementioned major landowner/father). A story about power, music, fable/magic and love. I’m looking forward to the sequel already!
Waterland (Graham Swift): This rather lovely – and sometimes challenging - book (first published in 1983) is a brilliant mixture of history of England, a Fenland documentary and a fictional autobiography. It’s about the changing landscape/land reclamation, social history, empire-building, brewers, sluice-minders, Victorian patriarchs, local eccentrics and family fortunes… oh, and murder, incest, guilt and insanity! Swift is a brilliant writer and I found the novel completely enthralling.