No Time For Goodbye, Bel Canto and The Innocent

An emotionally charged thriller, No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay is my favourite book of the year. Everyone who reads it will have their own solution as to why Cythia's family disappeared. But the reality is even more complex than you could guess. What keeps you reading is how the tension builds as you speed your way to the conclusion. Terrific.

Bel Canto is an extraordinary book. The setting is an international party at a grand house in a poor Latin American country where a beautiful American soprano has been flown in to sing. A gang of anti government soldiers burst in to capture the President. But he had stayed at home. A hostage drama develops and the story centres on a number of very interesting characters. The author, Ann Patchett, has won many awards and her story of the relationships that grow over the long weeks is heartwarming.

When I found that Ian McEwan had written a spy novel in 1990, it was irresistible. The setting for The Innocent in post war Berlin was equally encouraging. So why was I disappointed? Probably because the story suited a pacy thriller and what we got were passages of McEwan intricate descriptions, when all I wanted was the story to move on. This seemed to happen about a third of the way through. The first part of the book was interesting enough, and the final chapters were almost too painful to read as the action steps up a pace. So almost a great read, but not quite.

Mr Pancks

All the acting in the BBC's production of Little Dorrit is superb. But one performance that stands out is that of Eddie Marson as Mr Pancks, the debt collector. In the early episodes he is highly unlikeable as he squeezes the last penny for his employer played by John Alderton. But he becomes far more human in his other job as a private investigator. He relentlessly pursues the trail of the Dorrit family and eventually secures their inheritance. His drunken excitement at his quest's conclusion ends with his leapfrogging across the yard outside the Marshalsea Prison for Debt. Fabulous.

Old Family Photos

I spent the end of last week scanning all my old black and white family photos. Most were 2" x 2" taken by a box brownie camera. The scanner was brilliant as I could place six on the bed and it would recognise and scan each individually.

The picture of my brother John and I in Trafalgar Square in about 1954 caught my eye, mainly because the square was deserted, even in the middle of summer. How things have changed.


The same goes for a photo, which now includes brother Paul, at Heathrow, then called London Airport. There is the Queen's Building in the background that opened in 1955 as part of the only terminal, and that is all.

Love's Labour's Lost

On my continuing quest to see as many of the plays of William Shakespeare as I can, I took the advice of the critic in the Sunday Times and made my way on a dark and wet Thursday evening to Kingston Upon Thames and it's relatively new Rose Theatre. Losing my way at night on the infamous one way system, I managed in the end to follow the brown theatre signs and found one of the last spots on the roof of the car park.

I could not have found a better view than that from my seat in a well designed auditorium. Peter Hall's production was lucid and pacy. The acting was first rate in a play with little action. Peter Bowles was outstanding as Don Adriano de Armado. One of Bill's first, the play is an exercise in word play and "linguistic conundrums". If I have one criticism, it was that the actors were too static. I love how the RSC give so much movement to their productions. Just listening to actors delivering the text needs a lot of concentration. The Coca Cola in the interval did help.

Burn After Reading, Ghost Town and Quantum of Solace

You never quite know what you are in for when you go to a Coen Brothers movie. No Country for Old Men was an intense and serious story. However, with Burn After Reading we are back in Fargo territory, an offbeat thriller played for laughs. Fargo worked but this didn't. It was fairly entertaining and humorous, but the plot was stupid and the characters pathetic. The starry cast do their best, but their self obsession is pretty tiresome. Disappointing.

Ghost Town is an enjoyable "romantic" comedy. Ricky Gervais does really well in the leading role given that the dialogue is not always perfect. The location photography of New York is well done, and I have always liked Tea Leoni ever since Deep Impact. Not quite the Hollywood classic they hoped for, but a good try.

Some of the reviews for Quantum of Solace had not been kind, so I went with some apprehension that it would not be in the same league as Casino Royale. Not only was it a poor imitation of a Bond movie, but everything seemed to be wrong. Where do I start. Why a car chase to start? Just compare it with the chase in the previous film. Then the opening song, sorry - not my cup of tea. There were many references to previous Bond movies, all distressingly bad. The story was useless, the villains were wet and there was hardly any dialogue. What was left was a lot of action, mainly chases. You just can't plant Bourne type sequences into a Bond film and think that is sufficient. And the big set piece ending? What a let down. OK, the pace was fast and furious, Daniel Craig did his best and the locations were fine, especially the sequence at the Bregenz Festival in Austria. Just compare that with the horse race in Sienna. Were they really there? Lighten up Mr Bond.

Turville Valley Walk

I had kept the cutting from the Sunday Times of the 3rd of February as it described a walk in the western Chiltern Hills. Friday was sunny and cool, just right to explore this part of Buckinghamshire.

I had never been to Turville which was my starting point. Famous as the village where The Vicar of Dibley was filmed, it certainly is very pretty. The hillsides surrounding the valley were beautiful in their autumn colours.

The first half of the walk had the best views as it followed the ridge in and out of woods above the valley. There seemed to be red kites in the sky whenever I came out into the open, some came extremely close.

Once I reached Northend, the last forty five minutes was not so interesting as the route went through woodland parallel to the road back to Turville. The road was Holloway Lane, but was this the Holland Lane described by Ian McEwan in his book On Chesil Beach as "a sunken chalk track overhung with crumbling mossy banks that ran downhill to Turville". It must have been.