On holiday one of my favourite reads was an autobiography by John Sergeant who was once a political reporter for the BBC. It was called Give Me 10 Seconds. It was called this because the BBC usually had John ready to speak to the camera for perhaps two minutes. John needed to get his broadcast together in his head and would usually ask for 10 seconds for a quick mental rehearsal. The book was a particularly warm and enjoyable read and opened my eyes to the way the BBC works.The author seems to think that the BBC was built on rather military styles. Staff didn’t get holidays but instead were allocated ‘leave’. Numerous layers of management operated the BBC empire and it seemed to me to be very similar to how things operated at my old place of work, the Highways Agency.
John’s claim to fame came when he was reporting live from outside the British Embassy in Paris in November 1990. Mrs Thatcher had just heard that Michael Heseltine’s leadership challenge had garnered 152 votes in the first round of voting and while John was presenting live on television, Mrs Thatcher emerged from the embassy with her PR man Bernard Ingham by her side. Despite Mr Ingham trying to push John aside, he stood his ground and firmly held his microphone to the Prime Minister’s face while she advised everyone that her name would be going through to the second round of voting.
John’s book was a great read. He started out working with Alan Bennett as a comedy writer and performer but when he realised that he probably had no future as a tv comedian he got himself a job as a newspaper reporter in Liverpool and later moved over to the BBC as a radio reporter.
It’s actually really fascinating to hear of the rivalry between the radio news and the tv news, as back in the late 60s the radio people really didn’t have much time for their television counterparts. These days of course, television is the senior partner in news reporting and the cameras of the BBC, SKY TV and CNN take the viewer all over the world in search of news.
Even so, in recent years, people and politicians have been highly critical of the BBC not only for the way it reports but also for what it reports. I’ve seen some interviews with politicians by journalists like Jeremy Paxman which were quite frankly just disgracefully rude. Is there bias in the BBC? I personally think that the days of impartial news reporting is over but whenever something happens in the world, and I want some more information, my first thought is to go to the BBC website.
Mrs Thatcher was the first female British Prime Minister. She was born in 1925, studied chemistry at Oxford and married Denis Thatcher in 1951. She stood unsuccessfully for parliament and then settled down to have her children. Later she was finally elected in 1959 as the MP for Finchley.
Image courtesy creative commons
Mrs Thatcher was given various posts on the front bench and when the Conservatives under Edward Heath won the election in 1964, she was promoted to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science.
The Government had to deal with numerous issues such as union demands for higher wages and the three day week and they lost the election in February 1974 but Labour could only form a minority government. They then won a later election in October that same year. Mrs Thatcher then challenged Edward Heath for the party leadership and won, taking over as leader of the opposition in 1975. She finally became Prime Minister in 1979 famously quoting the prayer of St Francis on the steps of Downing St;
Where there is discord, may we bring harmony;
Where there is error, may we bring truth;
Where there is doubt, may we bring faith;
And where there is despair, may we bring hope.
Mrs Thatcher promoted the idea of people owning their homes and even introduced policies aimed at tenants buying their own council houses. She faced up to union demands most notably with Arthur Scargill and the mining unions but became hugely popular when she stood up to the Argentinians who invaded the Falkland Islands.
She led the Conservative Party to victory in three consecutive general elections, twice in a landslide, and she ranks among the most popular party leaders in British history regarding votes cast for the winning party; over 40 million ballots were cast in total for the party under her leadership. Her electoral successes were dubbed an “historic hat trick” by the British press in 1987 and her tenure as Prime Minister was the longest continuous period in office since the 19th century.
Her downfall came in 1990 which brings us back to John Sergeant’s famous moment. Michael Heseltine decided to go ahead with his leadership challenge and Mrs Thatcher burst forth from the British Embassy in Paris to make her statement that she had passed her name forward to the next round of the contest. She had been 4 votes short of victory in the first ballot and therefore a second round was required.
Thatcher seemed certain of going forward into that second ballot but after consulting with her ministers she decided to withdraw and it was John Major and not Michael Heseltine who emerged as the new Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party.
Mrs Thatcher has been portrayed by numerous actresses in film and television most notably by Gillian Anderson and Meryl Streep. Streep starred as Thatcher in the film Iron Lady. She was played frequently on TV sketches and in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only by comedian and impressionist Janet Brown. Perhaps the most famous comedy sketch about Mrs Thatcher came on the TV show Spitting Image in which she takes the cabinet for dinner. She orders steak and the waitress asks ‘what about the vegetables?’
Thatcher looks at her cabinet and replies ‘they’ll have the same as me!’
Mrs Thatcher retired from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election. She was a Prime Minister who was loved by some and hated by others and even when she died in 2013 at the age of 87 social media memes were declaring the wicked witch is dead!
Which side of the fence are you on?
Essentially, John Darwin was facing bankruptcy after getting hugely overreached on a series of buy to let mortgages. He decided that the only way out was to fake his own death and cash in on some life insurance policies. His wife apparently tried to talk him out of the idea but John, a dominating and overpowering personality, went ahead and faked his own death. Amazingly he even went back to live with his wife, sometimes having to retreat to the bedsits next door when any friends or family came to visit. He arranged a false passport using a method explained in the book ‘Day of the Jackal’ by Frederick Forsyth and then the two, Darwin and his wife, planned to buy property in Panama and live a new life. Later, Darwin decided he wanted to return to the UK under his own name by posing as someone who had suffered with amnesia and in fact one day he disposed of his fake passport, walked into a police station and told them ‘I’ve lost my memory!’
For me, who has been interested in the JFK assassination since at least 1968 when his brother, Robert Kennedy was also murdered and I was 12 years old, it’s a fascinating record. Others might think perhaps that the author has spread his research too far, that we are not interested in what the President’s pilot thought or did or how the honour guard prepared for the President’s funeral and how the President’s sister or brother-in-law reacted.
Marlene was one of those people perhaps born at the wrong time. Today might be a better time for her when lifestyles of gay and lesbian people are not so much of an issue.
This is an autobiography by Fenella Fielding, co-written with Simon McKay, and the title comes from her part in Carry On Screaming when she played a seductive character, possibly derived from the Adams Family, Valeria. In one scene Valeria tries to seduce Harry H Corbett standing in for the absent Sid James as a detective. Valeria asks ‘do you mind if I smoke?’ and then rather than smoking a cigarette, a cloud of smoke seems to arise from her body and envelop her. Harry H Corbett adds ‘just when I was trying to give it up’ before embracing her in the smoke.
In Fenella’s book above, she mentions that she hoped her book would not go the way of a lot of other showbiz autobiographies, interesting at first but then dissolving into lists of plays and films and other celebrities. Sadly, that seems to be the way this book does go, even so I enjoyed it.
I do love my showbiz biographies and autobiographies and one I picked up a while back was an autobiography by Dora Bryan. I love Dora from her many appearances in British films but my favourite film is probably 
This final book is the odd one out in this quartet of British comedy stars. It’s a biography rather than an autobiography. I don’t think Tony Hancock ever wrote one.
In my last few posts about books, rather than publish my usual Book Bag posts, I’ve incorporated book reviews into other types of posts; holiday memories and posts about books made into films and so on. During my last few holidays, I always seem to either have a couple of John Grisham books with me or found some in the places, usually rented villas, where we have stayed. I thought it might be an idea to write a John Grisham themed book bag post. Who actually is John Grisham then?
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
The Client
The Pelican Brief by John Grisham
The Firm by John Grisham
The Racketeer
The Boys From Biloxi
Liz and I are over here in sunny Lanzarote having exchanged the cold of the UK for the warmth of Lanzarote. Of course, it is still February and things aren’t perfect over here. It’s warm but there are plenty of days when gusty winds blow across the island as well as days when the sun has been obscured by clouds. Even so there are still plenty of bars to drink at, plenty of tapas to be eaten and of course we have plenty of books to read, two of which have inspired this week’s post.
The plot of the book and film are pretty complicated, although having read the book recently I think that the book is easier to follow. During the filming the director and his stars wondered who killed the character of Owen Taylor, the Sternwood’s chauffeur. They sent a cable to Raymond Chandler asking him. Chandler told a friend later ‘Dammit, I don’t know either!’
The Bay of Pigs was a great disaster for Kennedy. He inherited the invasion plans from the Eisenhower administration in which Vice President Nixon was a prime mover. Nixon felt that an invasion would boost his chances in the election contest against Kennedy but the CIA seemed to be relying on the assassination of Castro to kick off the invasion but that planned murder, for whatever reason, never happened.
Ten Days to Destiny by John Costello
This book was the sequel to another book about Bill Clinton. The first one dealt with Clinton’s early life and his election to the presidency; this one takes us through his first four years as president. The author takes us through the years of the Clinton White House and documents the issues like Troopergate; when the former Governor Clinton’s State Troopers revealed the comings and goings of Bill’s various mistresses, as well as the disaster of his healthcare reform work which he entrusted to his wife Hillary. The public clearly weren’t keen on Clinton’s ‘co-president’ – his wife, and their healthcare proposals were rejected by Congress. The mid term elections were another disaster for Clinton and the Democrats and the book goes on to show how Clinton turned the final two years of his first term presidency around and was able to win a second term.
Encore Provence by Peter Mayle
Many have speculated about his true sexuality but it’s clear that Larry enjoyed being labelled as camp rather than gay. The main relationship in his life was with his sister who became a mother figure to him when his adoptive mother died. The two lived next door to each other for many years in later life.
I’ve actually read this book quite a few times and it’s one of those that I mention when people ask me to describe Floating in Space. As much as I’m fond of Floating, this book is infinitely better. It’s a very simple story and probably one that has happened hundreds of times to hundreds of couples.
Once again Liz and I are on holiday in France and as usual I’ve filled up my book bag with books to read. My selection this year was a mix of new books and some books from my collection which I haven’t read for years. The one I’d like to focus on this week is Random Harvest by one of my favourite writers, 
The book tells the story in an entirely different way. It begins with a chance encounter on a train with Rainier and a young man who is looking for work. The two strike up a sort of friendship and Rainier invites the young man to work for him, He explains that he was in the war, was injured and woke up in a German hospital with loss of memory. He was repatriated through Switzerland but got his memory back after a fall and a collision with a taxi in Liverpool. The time between his earlier life and waking up in Liverpool is a blank. The young man becomes Rainier’s assistant and the two sometimes talk late into the night discussing what might have happened. Later in the book, Rainier is called to intervene at a dispute at the Melbury factory and his memory begins to return. He asks a local taxi driver about the hospital. The man asks does he mean the new or the old one? Rainier thinks the old one and goes on to describe it. ‘That doesn’t sound like either of them,’ answers the man but adds, ‘would you be meaning the asylum sir?’
Charles Dickens is one of my writing heroes. He is a giant in the world of literature and the author of one of my favourite books of all time, David Copperfield. He was a man with an incredible imagination and was a prodigious producer of numerous books and stories. Many of his works are still loved and appreciated today and the magic of his story telling is also reflected in film and television adaptations of his work.
Mary’s Mosaic by Peter Janney
Shall we Tell the President? by Jeffrey Archer.
The Long Dark Night by Susan Lund
The Woman who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 