A couple of years ago I listed my Top Ten films from 2001, a post that was inspired by a Facebook discussion. As I’ve not been making it to the cinema as often as I’d life recently, I’ve decided to repeat the exercise for a few different years – it might even come to be a series as I approach my 40th birthday…
After the Crash
23 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
Time for a confession – I’m terrified of flying, I hate it with a passion. There are so many strange noises and bumps and dangers that I don’t understand and can’t control. I have recurring dreams where I either witness a plane crash or am on a plane which is taking off in the middle of a city centre…
The Equalizer
22 June 2015 by 2 Comments
I’m just about old enough to remember the Edward Woodward television programme, The Equalizer, a drama about a former intelligence operative who acts as a private avenger saving downtrodden New Yorkers from various evil-doers. For the late 80s the show was remarkably violent…
How I Lost You
19 June 2015 by 2 Comments
Imagine being told by your husband, medical staff, police and the courts that you have killed your baby – despite having no memory of the event, would you believe what you were told? Susan Webster was convicted of the post-natal depression related manslaughter of her 12-week old son Dylan…
The Fault in our Stars
17 June 2015 by 2 Comments
I’m a crier. I cry at films and TV shows all the time, I’ve even been known to cry at TV commercials (and not just the annual John Lewis advert designed to tug at the heartstrings and send you to the High Street). When I sat down to watch The Fault in Our Stars, a film about teenagers with cancer…
The Little Paris Bookshop
15 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
There’s something wonderful about books – they take us into a different world. It can be a world of romance or danger. It can be a past world or a completely alien world. Books can make us happy, or sad, or help to heal pain. The central character of Nina George’s novel The Little Paris Bookshop…
The Versions of Us
12 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
I’ve often wondered what would have happened with my life if I had attended the girls’ school that my mum wanted me to go to rather than the local comprehensive that I did. Would I have gone to college and met my best friend? Would I have studied law or medicine…
Top Ten: Female Directed Films
10 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
As I get older I find myself becoming increasingly feminist in my opinions. I look around me and I see reports of women facing sexism in their daily lives, I watch Parliament and hear female MPs being told to “behave” by their male colleagues and I have to bite my tongue…
Hitler’s Forgotten Children
8 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
The Nazi obsession with racial purity is well known; their goal of an Aryan master race and their racial policies led to the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and the targeting of other racial and religious groups including Black Germans, gypsies, and physically and mentally disabled people…
The Killing of Bobbi Lomax
4 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
It is Hallowe’en 1983. Prom queen and teenage bride Bobbi Lomax lies dead on her front lawn, killed by a bomb placed by an unknown assailant. Just a few minutes later Peter Gudsen is also killed, a nail from a bomb piercing his brain. Within a few more minutes, a third explosion…