Rowan’s Rule: The Biography of the Archbishop by Rupert Shortt
Hodder & Stoughton, £20
NOT long after Rowan Williams became Archbishop of Canterbury, he invited me for lunch at Lambeth Palace to chew over media matters. The Palace was impressive. The lunch – canned tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches perched on our laps – less so.
Glasgow Film Festival 2009
LIVING in the shadow of the Edinburgh film event that the imposing John Huston once described as “the only festival that’s worth a damn” doesn’t bode well for Glasgow’s own festival ambitions. Yet, in just half a decade, the city’s film festival is beginning to show not only its worth, but also the development of a distinct voice that speaks loudly on the packed international circuit. As if Huston’s comments aren’t enough of a burden, the fact that Edinburgh hosts the longest continually running film festival in the world since 1947 certainly is. But Glasgow, what some describe as a cinephile city, has now produced the fastest growing event of its kind in Britain, with more than 25,000 visitors expected this year. Co-directors Alison Gardner and Allan Hunter, respectively head of cinema at the repertory theatre GFT and a Screen International film critic, took the filmic bull by its horns in 2005 and answered the call for Scotland’s largest city to have a sustainable film event to match its cultural status.
Minder
Channel 5
Cutting Edge: Killer In A Small Town
Channel 4
THE best way of watching the re-invented Minder is not to compare it too much with the original series. It might have been wiser not to saddle it with baggage from the past, but to give it a chance on its own merits for a different generation. However, there is probably something in clarifying the context of both versions. Old Minder was broadcast throughout the Margaret Thatcher years when entrepreneurs were encouraged and a certain amount of cheeky-chappie roguishness was tolerated. George Cole’s wheeler-dealing Arthur Daley fitted into this scenario perfectly. The new Minder, in Gordon Brown’s Britain and Boris Johnson’s London, is still a light-hearted romp, but set against a grimmer economic climate and a more uncertain world. While it works as a nod to the original idea, it comes across as a flimsy and ultimately implausible “Carry on rascals”, with a touch of diluted Hustle thrown in. It feels old-fashioned and out of place. But, as they say in business circles – seedy or otherwise – we are where we are.
Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam
by David G Dalin and John F Rothmann
Random House, $26
THIS book, which has already achieved iconic status in the United States, is going to make seriously disturbing reading for those who subscribe to the view that the pathological hatred that divides Arab and Jew in the Middle East is attributable to the Israelis alone.
SIX years ago this weekend, on February 15 2003, between one-and-a-half and two million people marched – or, in most cases, ambled – through the streets of London in order to tell Tony Blair that they didn’t want to be party to an American-led invasion of Iraq. As we all know, he preferred listening to voices in Washington – or possibly even in his head – to those coming from the streets. As we also know, his selective deafness had dire consequences, not just for the hundreds of thousands of people who are now dead as a result, be they Iraqi civilians or British or American soldiers, but also for his premiership and his reputation.
Keith Vaz says free movement of workers and free trade in Europe should be the bedrock of our economic recovery
John Healey says that where others would do nothing, Labour is giving real help to see everyone through very tough times
WHY is Number 10 keeping quiet about its dossier revealing that the Italians workers taken on at the Lindsey Oil Refinery were only employed after the British firm contracted the job were sacked after pocketing the entire contract fee but completing only 40 per cent of the work in the allotted time? Too many hostages [...]
Glyn Ford wants to know why there is no judicial reckoning for those who brought about the financial crisis
Paul Donovan says this country’s unjust system of detention without trial should be brought to book