Another Gulmohar Tree Aamer Hussein. Telegram Books 2009, Paperback, 111 pages, £2.00 Few nations have as an anarchic a reputation as Pakistan. Because of its present political instability, its possession of nuclear weapons, and its proximity to the war in Afghanistan, it is hardly at the top of the list of tourist destinations. Even President [...]

One of mankind’s principal preoccupations is predicting its own demise. The Mayans supposedly put together a calendar that dated the end of the world at some point in 2012. Nostradamus said that the planet would be consumed by nuclear war in 1999. People in London were extremely nervous in 1666, given the year’s numerical relationship [...]

It’s uncommon to associate melancholy with either majesty or beauty, particularly in the English speaking world. It’s a widely-held belief, certainly in America, that lacking overt cheer is evidence of psychological dysfunction. Anyone who thinks otherwise should try the following experiment: find a group of Americans, ingratiate yourself into their midst, and then look purposefully, [...]

A View From The Foothills Chris Mullin. Profile Books 2009, Hardcover, 448 pages, £10.68 Perhaps the most depressing aspect of Britain’s Labour government is the amount of conformity it requires of its acolytes. It’s rare that I can watch a government minister or most Labour MPs without shouting at the television, “Say what you really [...]

Chicago Farouk Abdel Wahab (Translator). Harper 2008, Hardcover, 352 pages, £16.76 It’s difficult not to sympathise with Margaret Mitchell. After she put down her pen upon completion of “Gone With the Wind”, she must have wondered, “how can I top this?” The same situation faced Harper Lee after she wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird”. If [...]

Blindness Giovanni Pontiero (Translator). Harvest Books 2008, Paperback, 352 pages, £9.69 I happened across the works of Jose Saramago quite by accident; the Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek mentioned him in reference to the novel “Seeing”, in which a democracy ceases to function because the electorate decides to submit nothing but blank ballots. Intrigued, I decided [...]

Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher, once said a metaphor for cinema could be found in a scene from the 1974 film, “The Conversation”: Gene Hackman, playing a paranoid detective, flushes a hotel toilet experimentally and is horrified to see the clean water replaced with blood which overflows the bowl and spills all over the floor. [...]

Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade Joseph Wheelan. Avalon Publishing Group 2008, Hardcover, 309 pages, £15.99 Ask anyone of a progressive bent who features in their pantheon of political heroes, most of the answers you’ll get will be fairly modern: usually icons of the Sixties, like Noam Chomsky or Robert Kennedy, get many mentions. Sometimes you’ll get [...]

Some movies are not intended to be high art. Before the invention of television, this was often the case: the thirties, forties and fifties were littered with throwaway films with forgettable characters and laughable story lines. The most extreme examples were the movies that were made to work with the traditional red lens / blue [...]

As the trailer indicates, this bio-pic going to be as scary as hell: You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video Tell me again, how did this man become President?