‘I Am Protest Incarnate’

Just finished re-reading Vol I of my favourite short story writer, Anton Chekhov, beautifully produced in a four volume illustrated collection by The Folio Society, London. My favourites in this book are The Steppe and Gusev, but particularly Gusev which was written...

Time After Time

I’ve just finished reading Ben Elton’s latest novel Time and Time Again (published eighteen months ago). And recently I just finished watching the US TV mini-series 11.22.63. The two stories have plots that are remarkably similar – though about different...

The Bloody Somme

Former soldier and Shankill Road-born Glenn Bradley responds to criticism about an invitation to Martin McGuinness to attend a Somme centenary commemoration, a service at the Ulster Tower in France on July 1. It has also been reported in the media that some veterans...

David Beresford

I wrote a feature for An Phoblacht in memory of the South African journalist David Beresford who died last week after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. David, who wrote for the Guardian, was also the author of Ten Men Dead. Here is my piece followed by the...

Melancholy Whores

Just finished Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s strange and disappointing Memories of My Melancholy Whores, told in the first person, which is about a 90-year-old bachelor’s infatuation with an underage virgin and refers to the Spanish song La Delgadina, about a father’s...