Covid Angel Visits.

                                                              (From my sketch book.)

from my sketchbook.

Susan Hill And The Midnight Hour.

 Picked up a couple of Susan Hill books on a recent book trawl. They were sitting on a cobwebby Halloween themed shelf in the Oxfam book Shop in Ann Street. They were both such lovely wee editions I could not walk away from them so I bought them with the intention of a late night autumnal feast. Then found myself reading them almost immediately. They just looked and felt so right for the time of year 

            Although the work feels reminiscent of some other stuff I have read recently , it was in an altogether pleasing way rather than a tumble of familiar tropes. She has her own voice and does her own thing. I was reminded of some of the genuinely unpleasant manifestations which occur in MR James stories. His ghosts are never benign and it is difficult to to think of a more unpleasant spirit than that of the vengeful, wicked and unrelenting Woman In Black, Susan Hill's most notorious creation. Similar fiends stalk the pages of these wee collections. There are no jump scares nor Tales From The Crypt full stops and violent ends. Sometimes years pass without resolution and wisdom always comes too late.

            Which you must admit is a tempting concoction to taste, much less swallow. Why not pick them up, uncork a bottle and retire to your Edwardian study to sup with panthers, or at least listen for their soft padding feet, circling in search of an ending.

Moondust. In Search Of The Men Who Fell To Earth.

 Who were the men who fell to earth? you might well ask. Well, Andrew Smith has the answers to that question. Lots and lots of answers, to questions from the foreground of the brain and questions best motivated by the most human of curiousites, that fear of the unknown, driven by the urge to jump and see. And by heaven for a few years we jumped and saw. Here is the account by an author in search of nine astronauts who along the way details the history of the Space Race and beyond, to paraphrase Buzz. Buzz Lightyear that is, not Buzz Aldrin.

               Whata question these men must have had to ask themselves.; What do you do once you return from walking on the moon? When you have stood on the surface of our nearest cosmic neighbour, trampled in the printless soil, possibly even blotted out the Earth with no more than a raised thickly gloved thumb? That tiny spot in space we occupy where everything that has ever happened, everything that is happening and everything that will ever happen is just a thumbs width from vanishing. Talk about seeing things from a certain perspective. Is one ever able to unsee? Would one even want to?

              Moondust; In Search Of The Men Who Fell To Earth is a truly fantastic mix of history, reporting and personal memoir. In this multi-media age, people descriptions are reduced to user friendly sound-bites, everything must be easily explained, lazily described. In doing so the modern era can diminish the worth of heroism, not so much standing on the shoulders of giants, more like going through their personal mail to find out what they are really like. Not so with Andrew Smith. As the title suggests  he is on a journey, a pilgrimage into the heart of Americanna, an age of marvels. And he does so with dignity and great insight. Along the way he registers many cultural bullet points or rather the points of cultural impacts. impacts shaped in the wake of a group of individuals who were, undoubtebly, lucky enough to reach the zenith of a professionalism that allowed each in their own way to literally blaze a trail to the stars.  From all points of America , the children of the men and women who built America became pioneers at the very start of the next big trek, the trek to the stars ( Ugh, I know. I could not resist it.) Every piece of the hugely complex jigsaw of NASA's history is in place and the picture and the picture revealed is a staggering behometh of ingenuity and scientific hubris. A swaggering new kid on the block with Babel-like potential. It is the culmination of a thousand ambitions and dreams of traveling to space, to the moon, doing what you gotta do and returning safely home. Not quite mad, all truly glad and dangerous to know, the first and last of a dying breed. And for a brief moment in our shared history it truly felt as though mankind were singing from the same aspirational hymn sheet, a prayer to the ages, Wonderful.

             This book is not just a book about the men who traveled to The Moon and back. It is also a book about what sort of man does that, who they were before and who they became afterwards. if it can be believed that any of us can really change who we are. Well, it tries to. Andrew Smith freely admits some of the personalities involved defy introspection, pre or post lunar dander. Stoicism is a word that rarely springs to mind in the modern era but this group of individuals are as steadfast as it is possible to imagine, as if such mental discipline can be programmed, which I suppose it must. To panic in any situation outside the bubble of the blue world is to invite disaster. 

              A fantastic read. A fantastic book.

              Sprinkle a little Moondust on your book shelf.

The London Monster.

Oh My Giddy Aunt! When I lifted this book, on a recent visit to Oxfam Books Ann Street Belfast, I thought I had come across a sequel to The Phantom Raspberry Blower Of Old London Town by Ronny Barker and Spike Milligan (It also being a harrowing true story!)but t'was not the case. This is a bonkers true yarn that stands completely on its own. What a mad old place London was...er, is.

If you can imagine it then it has probably occurred at some time in the history of this ancient city.

Let The Tribe Increase.

Found a copy of The Mob album Let The Tribe Increase. Well, I say found but I really just dug it out from a mountain of old vinyl leaning against the wall.My home is increasingly looking like the set of Steptoe And Son.It crackles in the way well played, well listened too vinyl,does. First discovered The Mob with the single Unexpected Guest.They were a very political band but that was nothing to someone whos ma used to play The Men Behind The Wire all the time.I really got the feelung they meant every word they sang and it was not posturing or posing.I never really thought that way about music, I sort off treated all genres as if they were the same. In fact, i still feel awkward when people wax knowingly about music or film. I always feel as if everyone is aware of a rule book I have not seen. Thankfully, The Mob performed as though there were no rules. Back in the day I had a copy of this magazine and the pages ,including the cover, ended up cellotaped to my bedroom wall. Let the tribe increase,indeed.

Ghostly Double-Bill.

I really cannot recommend these two ghostly treats for Christmas highly enough. Created while the BBC were on topof their game when it came to period drama and these stories definitely feel as though they are off a very different era. Despite the poverty and hardship, the yolk of class and a genuine belief in an immaterial world. I do not believe that MR James , for all his learning and erudation, could have concieved that within two generations God himself might die. They are two beautifully crafted meditations on hubris and greed, seen through a prism of cranky scholarlship. Do your imagination a favour this Christmas and set aside a couple of evenings to enjoy these visions of a lost England, or at least an England that sleeps, its slumber restless and touched by gossamer threads.

Rude Boy Cant Fail.

Have a vistor to the house.Rudi the Rude Boy. Gifted to me by my nephew Eamon Jnr. This explains why i got home the other night to find a Trojan Records compilation blarring out of the speakers,mind you, a quick blast of Israelites does chase away the workaday blue

and speaking of Ghost Stories For Christmas; Dolly.

Could not resist this lovely looking little novella by Susan Hill. Steeped in Jamesian tropes with a subtle flavour all her own devising it has proved to be the perfect little treat for these cold December evenings. There is something delicously satisfying about stories told in this form, in this very format, which lends itself to a Christmas scare. Small but pefectly formed it sits just right .. And you can do the same while reading it.

Behind The Sofa.

Came across this amazing piece of artwork on a letter page of an old British comic, an issue of Valiant from 25th May 1974. I wonder if this was the first time this entered the public shared cultural zeitgeist. The whole "Behind The Sofa" meme is such a broad stroke when it comes to Doctor Who it would be hard to pin down when it first made its way into our shared conciousness. Or the little bit of the shared pop-conciousness we all carry a part off...

The North Water.

I think it was Sir Winston Churchill who once dismissed life in the navy as little more than a life of "Rum, sodomy and the lash.", reading Ian McGuire's compelling and disturbing novel the only thing missing from that soundbite was "Weavils in the cheese."I suppose it could be argued that life on a whaler is different from life in the royalist of navys , but i think the differences might have well come down to "whatever floats your boat" Literally. The tone reminded me of The Tiger Lillies adaption of Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, except the monsters in this story are not slimy products of the slimy sea, they are crew members.One in particular. a sly vicious monster of a man, not some mythical demon but an all too plausable being. Its damn grim up north., all right. Life on board a whaling vessel was not for the faint hearted. I had picked up a copy of The North Water thinking it was an adventure story along the lines of Moby Dick. I now realise that is like thinking Orca The Killer Whale is a bit like Finding Nemo. This is a book, as well as a boat, filled with some bone-chilling personas. As much as I found aspects of the world whaling trade interesting to read and learn about, I also found the industry a source of genuine horror. It involves, after all, the slaughter and butchery of a magnificent species. It was partly a fascination about the extremes of hardship people used to be prepared to subject themselves to, whether it was to further the knwledge of mankind or earn a crust of bread.A source of morbid intrest? Maybe.morbidity abounds.... This book is not for the faint hearted. It is genuinely unsettling. Swimming, as it does, into the dark shallows of the human soul.Some one mentioned to me that the BBC were going to, or possibly already have, produced an adaption of Ian Mc Guire's book. I would have considered certain aspects of this book to be unfilmable. Mind you, I would have said that about a work based on the work of Tolkien that does not involve any work by Tolkien. But what do I know... This ship of fools heads out into dark and dangerous realms. There are few places on any map that ever was that quite covers the dark terrotories of the human heart. Men in extremis are capable of anything and no beast is truly so fierce. One of the few creatures moving on the face of the Earth who is self enough aware to understand deliberately inflicted cruelty and bask in its lurid glow.

Coming Home #1.

I picked up issue one of this new comic COMING HOME, as published by RE-LIVE, a mental health charity based in Wales, one that seeks through using the arts to give voice to marginalised groups. In this instance allowing veterans of conflict to discuss their experiences and in particular what they they went through when attempting to pick up the threads of their lives when returning to Civey street. Nothing is ever as simple and straightforward as we wish things would be, complex, difficult and painfully humane this comic is a great read. Each story echoes the experiences of a different voice, each served by a different artist and it works very well indeed as the stories range in complexity and insight. Have to mention Stretcher Bearer Stan, it takes a very humane observation of the verey complex political and social era of The Troubles and handles it in one of the most insightful and quite moving ways I have seen in any medium. Its a gooed cause and a good comic. Just the perfect mix of human variables. Why not lend an attentive ear and a helping hand.

Death Of A Bookseller.

Was given a proof copy of this fantastic new book by first time writer Alice Slater. Its a tale of two retailers, both booksellers but both very, very different people. Given the amount of deatil in regard to book selling and the life of retailers and their relationship with their product and the people who buy it, I could not help but imagine that she must have at some point worked in bookselling. The book is so laden with an eye for the day to day details and the way book shops are run, she has just got to have spent some time in the trenches of retailing. she carries the scars all right. And while it may be set in a microcosm of the real world, in the bubble of book selling, it also works as a nicely observed thriller with a growing sense of unease as we get to better understand the foibles of the protagonists. After all, these characters are not aware they protagonists in any bodies story but their own. Hardly the stuff of Thomas Harris nightmare visions of the depravity the human soul , but it offers an unsettling glimpse into a very real world where no one is entirely bad nor entirely good. None of us live inside a thriller narrative while no one gets to spend their time in a situation comedy. We are just serving life terms in life stories of our own making. i did feel the book felt very london centric, which is not to rift on its location. how much book selling in London would differ from bookselling in another English city is beyond me. i meant that it feels as though the store itself would not feel out of place in a Richard Curtis script. How that defines its authenticity is anyone's guess. How real is the paper world of such a notion, its subjective I suppose, based more on the notion of how real you want it to be. In anyones story we are in the mind space of another human being anyway. It only has to feel as real as the story requires it to feel. And on that level it does feel completely real. As I grow older I wonder if the past can best be defined as a place as opposed to a mind space, maybe both. The only palete we have to draw upon are our own memories, the only canvas the here and now. On that leve, alone, I really enjoyed this fast moving and well observed book.

Cybermen The Stuff Of Nightmares.

In the Ninth Doctor Episode Dalek The Doctor came across the head of a Cyberman on display in a glass case in the warehouse of demented billionaire ( Are there any other kind?)Von Statten. It was a nod to previous encounters, a slight foreshadowing of horrors yet to come and a reminder this was still the show we grew up with. "The stuff Of Nightmares" was how he enigmatically described them. Mind you this Doctor could talk about marmalade and make it sound enigmatic. He was quite right. The Cybermen, their history and their twisted evolution is truly the stuff of nightmares and a notion that should serve as a cautionary tale for those attempting to expand their existance beyond all reason. Dig out this old issue of the superlative Fortean Times to learn more. There you go; your mission should you choose to accept it is to track this issue down, in whatever way you might. Mind you, no cheating, use of time vechiles would not be playing ball. Think of the temporal displacement for one thing....

( With special thanks to the marvelous Joanne for use of her Jodie cosplay. Tag, shes it!)

The Fiends In The Furrows.

Saw this book on a recent book trawl and snapped it up as soon as I saw it. Folk Horror, whether in book form or filmic form is a gripping genre that quietly yields all amnner of antiquated horrors. Yet Foklk horror has never really made a transition to the mainstream (Although I would not discount some episodes of Emmerdale I have seen over the last couple of years.) So this was an unexpected but welcome find. Nine stories all exploring new and old areas of intrest with regard to folkloric tropes, if they can be said to exist. All nine stories celebrating various aspects of the folk horror tradition. Or at the very least the loose tennents that are the muddy roots of its unsettled furrows. I am not familiar with any of the contributors but in their work they traverse the seperate themes that combine to hold up the lore; strange rituals, even stranger people, paranoid communities existing in timeless isolation. All following their own muddy muderous paths. I jumped in the very night I picked this book up and I am glad I did. Trudging home from the bookshop I picked it up in through an uncleared morass of sopping fallen leaves which set the tone it felt the appropriate time. One story in particular raised the hairs on the back of my neck. A descent into manmade depravity in all too famil;iar places followed. But I will not say which story it was. You can find that out for yourself. The editors of this collection made strong and diverse choices and nothing as simple as a "my favourite" should detract from their bold choices. A great anthology plucked from a fertile field. I doff my flat cap to Nosetouch Press the publishers. Who knows what I mean by this.

Teddy The Cosplaying Dog.

From The Titanic to The Daleks. Teddy slips effortlessly through them all. I think he came to cosplaying late in his dog life but its proved a rich furrow for his paws to plow. Long may he continue.

Amazing World Of Doctor Who.

Because it is.

Ghost Story For Christmas

Look what Big Finish are bringing to the Festive Feast of Christmas this year. I am constantly surprised by the Big Finish Torchwood stories. Again and again they have delivered top notch dramas, mostly quite disturbing and always inventive. Imagine a line of audio stories where the series producer was Robert Aickman and that might indicate the unsettling nature of some of the work. A story may start with something as inoccuos as a cofee cup sitting in an unusual place and it degenerates into a terrifying tale of duplicity and alien incursions. And much as I enjoy the breadth and range of the various character driven tales I do have a fondness for the Queen Victoria stories. In the Doctor Who continuity it was Queen Victoria who sets up Torchwood so it is entirely fitting that she should champion some of the series most startling episodes. They really are that good and worth sekking out.And I shall be seeking out this yuletide treat.

Jet Black R.I.P.

Tony Moore.

Met the artist Tony Moore the other day. What a fine fellow and what a fantastic artist. He did this lovely sketch for me and I felt the years fall away. Now that is the power of art. And Kindness.

Moby Dick (Classic Illustrated.)

Bit of a bold attempt this was. To adapt one of the most ambitiously arch novels in American history into a standard comic sized edition you could have rolled up and stick in your back pocket. Try doing that with the original book and you wont be able to sit down. It s been a while since I read the original but chunks of it still play ouy in my brain. It really haunted me for a long time after I read it. Parts off it are surely memories, experiences that its writer recunted in the narrative. Its a great adventure yarn, when a young man sets out on a life defining series of incidents and experiences, edures hardships and makes the best of friends before narrowly avoiding being dragged down into the abyss. It has a power and a resonance that feels really authentic. Actually so much literature that survives from as far back as Moby Dick has that quality. One that is so hard to pin down inmodern litrature. Authenticity seems to scare modern publishers. I get the impression it embarrasses modern publishers, that is untastefully naive. Modern confessionals feel so meta these days. Too aware of their possible connections to social media? Hmmm, this is what happens when I try to explain something that just feels right to me. Why explain at all.

Speeder-Biking.

"You know, my days working for the Empire were among the most fulfilling and job afirming experiences of my life. Sure there were the occasional genocidal moments but lets face it the universe is teeming with life. A good friend of mine recently shot a protocol robot, a basic gold model, you know the type, and it could speak over six million languages. Six million! No droid lives long enough to need to speak six million languages. At least they dont when my platoon are about,har,har. Yet people will insist on giving us a hard time, always pointing out the marginal things we get wrong and blatantly ignoring all the things we get right.But Oh, you destroy one peaceful planet which has no weapons (Ooops, my bad, "had" no weapoms. It is , after all, now just space dust.) and you get branded as The Evil Empire.Well, just you consider this; What you might call "evil" some one else might consider well ordered.And we can all use a little order. A New Order. Anytime now..." Corville Bampht. Speeder-Bike Pilot.Coruscant Imperial Division.

Anarchy In The UK (Well, The Part Of It My Bedroom Was In.)

I was in a store recently that had for back ground music bits and pieces from Movie sountracks and various computer games when suddenly the sound of The Sex Pistols Anarchy In The UK blared out like someone knocking over shelves in an old Blockbuster store. They sang for it all right. Anarchy in the streets, that is. And thankfully that did not happen. I was thirteen, or so, when I first heard that song and all though they were singing for anarchy I did hope it would not come to that. Even as a young boy I had seen how bad things could get when social unrest was unleashed upon the streets. I saw whole streets ablaze and grew up almost at the geographical center of Ardoyne and had witnessed what it was like to grow up in a war zone. Our childhood had been played out with the Troubles as a back drop, as the snarling, biting real thing. So I understood this was only a song and not a call to arms. Or was it more than that?

It surely was to me and many others. Like the faint stirrings caused by the creation of something in Mount Doom, the ring of power this time around was a circle of music. Round and round our heads it went, changing us at a deeper level than we thought possible by a rock band. The Sex Pistols were making Gollums of all of us. We forget the taste of bread, or at the very least how to earn it. As a boy I thought musicians, particularly pop stars, fell from the heavens, fully formed,a race apart, speaking their own language, not bound by the rules of earth bound mortals (Boy, did I get that one wrong. They lean towards being more messed up than any "real" peple I ever knew. Like actors they were driven by their own demons to escape the realities of their lives and replace certainties with promises wrote in smoke and glitter.The Sex Pistols were the first band I knew who owned what they were. Not the faux-posturing of many less than modern contempary artists clinging to the notion they are keeping it real. More a sense of them not being able to escape the reality of who and what they were. I,m losing the thread of what I am trying to say here.They had something about them that marked them out as well different and they sold it to futurity...A friend recently told me he thought I had always overated The Pistols, that they were a bunch of thieving magpies who ripped off a load of sixties rifts by better bands. Yes, I do allow my friends to talk to me like this. Its just words after all. Maybe he is right, I am a bit thinly read on sixties music.At the time of my maximum enjoyment of The Sex Pistols I was rather living in the moment. And memories are made of moments.. I'm away to look for that thread I lost.

Mrs Lowry And Son.

I have to mention an exceptional movie I saw this week; Mrs Lowry And Son. Starring Venessa Redgrage and Timothy Spall. What a good week it has been for Vanessa Redgrave, recognised by The Crown for a lifetime of dedication to acting. And she looked so pleased to be receiving such an award. Even a little bemused that she should be rewarded for doing something she so obviously loves. Quite touching to see. That great artistes such as her are also so modest. She and Timothy Spall play a blinding two hander n this lyrical portrait of the relationship between mother and son and the art that seperated them. We get to peep around the net curtains into the lives of what is left of the Lowry family as they float and bob about in a sea of troubles of their own makings. Socially crippled they exist in a fragile, but hardy enough life on the fringe of poverty following a fall from a genteel existance that mostly only existed in the mind of Mrs Lowry. One moment the viewer is smiling the next tearing up. Probably. The diector does not assume familiarity with Lowry's paintings. We are introduced to their lives before we see what he is up to in the attic. Although the inspiration for much of the work is put before our eyes, to extrapolate as we wish. Loved the sequence with the reclyning Lowry on the wall and especially the origins of the bearded lady. It affords a simple dignity and an almost heavenly grace which will forever enrich that particular painting for me. Things might have been grim up North but they could also be beguilingly funny. Poverty and back breaking work can make, break and shape the whole of us. Humour frees our souls for moments at a time and we can survive by stumbling from one to the other. The heart may well break at times but reparations are possible, even when we find we do not actually like the ones we love, exposing an aggregate of suffering and unrequited hopes. The bedrock of family where we daily flounder and yet carry on. Its a beautiful piece of work. which magically, if subtly gives us a glimpse of what a piece of art sees while we stare at it. You will know the framing sequence I mean when you see the film for yourself. Which you really should do. There is a particularly affecting scene where Lowry is brushing his mother's hair. He is describing his day to his house bound ma, and he recounts seeing a lady with a beard. And it is how he describes this to his mother. Verbalising a gentle humanity and even love for a singular human being who in all probability faced abuse and discourtesy in a hard old world in hard old days. He painted her in a picture and that expression of love is there. As it is in everything he choose to put on canvas.

The Scarf Artist

He came, he saw, he knitted. Doctor Martin presented me with this beautiful scarft which he knitted especially for me. It took him three days and is just about one of the nicest things anyone has ever given me. He really has a great imagination and magic knitting fingers.Old Madame Nostradamus would turn green. Some one mentioned to me thay had seen him on a park bence knitting away, the very picture of the artist he is.

1973.

Theres A Light On At Arkham Asylum.

Theres a light on at Arkham asylum that never goes out. Just as well really, the inmates might get out.

Image Of The Fendahl.

Finished listening to this superb adaption of a classic Fourth Doctor tale, an audio adaption of the novel as written by Terrance Dicks from an original script by Chris Boucher. I do mean this is quite literally a classic tale, not just that is a story from the classic era. Its as close as one can get to a Quatermass tale as Doctor Who ever got, although it has come close on a number of occasions. Sharing its DNA as much as rifting on a Kneale trope. Actually, I am being a bit lazy there. It shares some themes and even the atmosphere of a situation when Science is mistaken for occult activity. Modern science does not make much room for miracles or deus ex machina moments as they devalue resolution. But as a means of drawing the listener down a dark path with goblin creatures on all sides this tight bit of speculative fiction really gets us there; "Like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned 'round and turns no more his head, Because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tred." Its spoke near the start of the first episode. Beautifully intoned by Tom Baker in the transmitted episode, with the equally beautiful Louise Jameson pulling narrative chores on this three discer. And the Fendahl is a frightful fiend. From its sibilant hissing and dragging to its giant alien tapeworm appearance it is one of the nastiest looking, and sounding, nightmare creatures ever to drag its way into the life of The Doctor and his companions. Its weird and almost Lovecraftian, so terrible a life form that the frightened Time-lords tried to eraze all knowledge of its existance from the universe, going as far as to timelock its homeworld. A tale too terrible to tell? Chris Boucher delivered a pretty taut horror thriller, amazing to think this reached a family audience of millions, given how truly horrible the Fendahl is. He must have felt on a creative high, writing this and some really exciting Blakes Seven stuff around the same time. The BBC produced some amazing and hugely influential stuff around this era. An era which predates social media, an era mostly without agendas outweighing the basic call to entertain.Sure, wedge issues could come in under the radar but never to the extent where it was crushingly obvious and drama killingly stifling. This story is literally a warning to the curious. Be ready and beware the answers one may find when digging deep. Like the greedy dwarves of Moria who dug too deep and sealed their own doom. The fluidity of the script is aided by a perfect reading by a wonderfully adaptive actress; Louise Jameson. It helps she played the main character Leela I suppose but she is a woman of many talents. A writer and a director as well. Her voice shifts from narrator to companion effortlessly, talented people like her make it sound easy, which I am quite sure it is not. I have heard her speak quite a bit now, among the many afterwards on the Big Finish CD extras. She is smart and witty and very generous with praise for those who have earned it. i had always hoped for a meeting at some point between her and a current Doctor, perhaps on Galifrey, in the very hell of The Time War. It has not happened yet but....

Hilary Mantel.

I was saddened to hear this great lady has passed. Just today a friend messaged me to say so. Another fan of her work. And what a body of work that is. I say "is" rather than "was" as her work will stand the test of ages and always remain current. As if the work could pass along with the creator. As with so many I was mesmerised at times by the viseral power of her work.One moment alone in The Mirror And The Light caught me like a winding blow to the stomach. When the enemies of Thomas Cromwell set about her like a biblical pack of jackals and we felt his fall as though we had taken up residence in his mind.An illusion off course but the coceit was we thought we knew when in fact we only felt. Thats as real as it gets.And its going to have to do. I have seen a few of her talks online. And they are wry bittersweet affairs.She was witty, insightful and more than anything else she caused me to slow down, to think at the same speed I was absorbing her words.A Cliff Notes absorbtion of her words is not reading her at all. Like light reflecting on shifting water, each wave concealing more than it showed. The work remains. Sensibly upright, timeless tomes that might well gather dust but never age. One cannot help but feel another age has passed. There has been so much of that off late.But unlike the monarchial regeneration no one steps into the shoes of lost authors. No cross of office, no orb of significance. Broken staffs signifying an end of service makes more sense to me now. Even as much as spilled ink or blunted quill or the pages blank and unused that will remain so. No more tales to tell. The Queen is dead.

Androids Of Tara.

Blimey, was not expecting this. Began what I thought would be a straight forward enough adaption of what i remember from the television series and within a couple of pages there was mention of feudal slavery, apocalyptic diseases decimating the population of Tara and even mention of terrifing coersive bed hopping and death by being buried alive. Told at a jaunty angle, as though to say "get a load of this medieval lot". Even as a thinly read Belfastian like my fourteen year old self, as I was in 1978 when this story was first transmitted, could tell this was a pastiche of some similar materia ( the Prisoner Of Zenda and possibly Herges King Ottaker's Sceptre. Probably because it felt so familiar in a BBC classic adaption sort of way, I barely considered Tara to be an alien planet , more a faux-Latveria filled with swah bucking high adventure and low paranoid robomania. Tara is a pecuiar city state stretched planet wide (as sci-fi stories tend to portray when visiting other worlds, one planet, one race, one weather system,one political and social system. its a long standing trope that has never made much sense but readers mostly go along with it without realising how odd this actually is.) The villan of the piece, Count Grendel of Gracht,as played by fantastic character actor Peter Jeffreys, pops up in proceedings as a worthy, if moustache-swirlingly swarthy, adversary for The Doctor. He plays a wicked counterpoint to our child-like but brilliant hero. Grendel is a selfish bully, born to the purple. Yet he is very much a product of the society he inhabits where he the percieved "good guys" operate around a very aggresive class bound system (They even threaten to murder The Doctor because he does not immediately sucumb to their demands!) The class system on Tara is feudal and just about as undemocratic as Doctor Doom's Latveria. Social mobility is an impossible dream on this world and The Doctor and Romanna do absolutely nothing to change this. Passing through as they do "on little cat feet" like the fog in the poem by Carl Sanburg. The Count Grendel, as the name would imply, is a Wrong 'un, and it comes through even stronger in David Fisher's clever and exciting little novelization. The second of two recently released and botyh have proved to be a hugely enjoyable addition to the Doctor Who library. It even ends with a golden age of Hollywood sword fight between The Count and The Doctor, playing out across the villan's castle lair. Yes, very enjoyable with cheeky and unexpected liberties taken with the expanded text which add to the fun.