SSSSSSSSH!Listen.

                                           Do'nt You wonder sometimes about sound and vision?

Sax Rohmer's Chinatown.

First published in hardback in 1922 by Cassell books this lurid collection of tales by Sax Rohmer must be approached with eyes wide open to the life and imagined times of its author. From the fog enshrouded cobbled red brick streets and opium dens of Limehouse to the Jabba The Hutt palaces of old Shanghai come a series of tales concerning inscrutable(yes, One does cringe) orientals ,disembodied vengeful talloned hands, grotesque giant spiders guarding forbidden treasures and lethal madames with mischief on their minds. It is a caution off course and it is to be almost expected that the creator of Fu Manchu would have similar tales percolating in his inkwell. The work of Sax Rohmer is probably the single most persistent source of the cliche of the inscrutable oriental villain and his women swing between absolute femme fatales and delicate eastern flowers. Fearsome vixens abound in these tales as well as a peculiar breed of English gentlemen one comes across very rarely in fiction today.It seems one never left home without a hat and cane and the swarthiest of facial hair and always readily equipped with an eye for adventure.
             This wee volume feels like one of those Conan Doyle Holmes anthologies of cases and stories with some being better than others but all adding to the overall sense of curiously English Noir with an oriental flavor. Some with recurring characters, good and bad, and situations that bleed into each other. Well, they are all occurring in the same area of London, Limehouse, in the same time frame which really adds to the sense of place.The collection contains a story Tcheriapin which has appeared in other anthologies. It is one of those stories the reader might feel he or she has read before or is vaguely familiar without being aware that is a Sax Rohmer story.
             The foggy air is cold and damp and the streets resonate with the tap tap tap of well shod heels upon cobbles.Oh the game is afoot once more (as the Great Detective himself put it.) as night falls over Chinatown..

Remembering Things I Never Knew.

                            "Blimey!That's how you make a mummy?You have got to be kiddin'!"

Who The Dickens.

Simon Callow's wonderful account of the author who's very presence he has channelled on more than one occasion. He has appeared in Doctor Who as the character a couple of times and makes it appear so effortless one cannot help but wonder if he is in touch with something beyond our kin(actually I would imagine he would do something as casual as grocery shopping with a degree of otherworldliness.)Yet this book is written with a degree of authority and earned knowledge on the subject matter and if it is possible for prose to twinkle then this does.twinkle like a starry starry night.

                                       (A beautiful shot from the BBC archives from the episode.)
Callow keeps the spirit of the great man alive.He writes with sympathy and wit and I would love to hear him perform a reading of this work in much the same way Dickens himself entertained his audiences. Keeping them enthralled as though wondering through a world of Dickensian characterisation and insight, funny,moving,scary and the absolute full gamut of life;Dickensland.

The Unquiet Dead is a great doctor Who story which epitomises everything which is good about the show.The storytelling, the acting and the craft that went into its execution.display a creative energy that is akin to catching lightning in a bottle(or measuring artron energy with a screwdriver.)It was written by Mark Gatiss and was only the third televised outing for the newly regenerated and much missed television show.It was Rose' first journey into the past and approaches even the notion with a charm and sensitivity I have not really seen since.Yet it is Somon Callow's Dickens whose is at the heart of this wonderful story.A traveller unable to find rest in his own skin.A man troubled by growing older with a fear of the future and a sense of futility that s pell in the Doctor's company soon dispenses...Just look at that strut as he walks through the snowy streets of Victorian Cardiff.
                 That is the dander of a man reborn.

Elizabethan Joyride.

                                                               (From my sketch book.)

The Crown Rests Uneasily.

                                                              (From my sketchbook)

Bird Of Paradise.

                       No,It is not a deleted scene from Captain America The First Avenger, it is a wonderful piece by Daryl "Detective 1945" Shaw.                                              
                                                             Oh for shame, Howard.
                                                                  Duck and Cover!