Was it really thirteen years ago? I had an idea for a novel and went to the Glastonbury Festival, the last year before they built the big fences. I wrote a long diary about it and, by the time I’d finished that, had a commission to write Festival. It was written as a YA novel but works fine as a short novel for adults too and, I was pleased to find when rereading it this year, most of the music references are to artists who still mean a lot today. Festival was my best selling YA novel this century, even without counting the free copies given away with every issue of Just Seventeen magazine ten years ago. Why was I rereading it? Because the rights have reverted, so I am…
Five albums and fourteen Grammies into her career, Alicia Keys has the purest soul voice of her generation. She nearly fills the Capital FM Arena, where she last appeared twelve years ago, an evening that my companion witnessed. He describes it as a painful event: she only had one album out and every song was extended with singalongs and solos to make a 40 minute set last twice as long. These days, she’s a veteran, bolstered by her biggest hit to date, singing with Jay Z on Empire State of Mind After a bombastic intro, Keys appears behind a curtain to sing a snatch of that classic, but we know she’ll save the full version for last. Five security guards sit impassively in front of the triangular stage,…
About three years ago, I heard mention of a novel with an intriguing title that had an introduction by one of my favourite writers, John McGahern. I got it and read a couple of pages. It looked well written but, rather… ‘a masterly portrait of a truly virtuous and dedicated man’ says The New Yorker on the cover. Sounds dull, doesn’t it? And the opening pages, about a Missouri farm boy heading to agricultural college, aren’t gripping. Then I read this article about how Stoner, while little known in the US, was steadily gathering readers all over Europe (a selection of the translation covers above) and thought, I’d better give this another go. I finished it in 48 hours this bank holiday weekend. The novel…
An extended version of my review as it appears in today’s Nottingham Post. Thanks to TV and film roles, Eddie Izzard has become a household name. A documentary series about his ill-fated Mandela marathons begins tonight. He’s so popular that a second date was added at the Capital FM Arena. Confusingly, it’s the day before the first Force Majeure show. Last time he performed in the city it was for 220 people at Lakeside. I tried to get tickets but missed out by a minute. Did get to see him at his next appearance, at this arena, when he was warming up for the then new Labour leader, Ed Miliband. Odd occasion. The other well known warm-up/microphone handerouter was Joan Bakewell. Eddie says he…
Back from the Iron Age festival in Cullercoats mentioned in my previous post. Pete Mortimer’s Iron Press was celebrating its fortieth birthday, a remarkable achievement. The redoubtable Pete (who was born up the road from me, in Sherwood, and recently wrote a memoir about coming back to Nottingham) organised and MCed a remarkable array of talent. Even more remarkably, virtually every event was sold out, with over two hundred people at the Friday and Saturday night events. These featured former Iron magazine assistant editor Ian McMillan (above), the ‘bard of Barnsley’ in the Crescent Club and Newcastle man David Almond (whose first two, pre-Skellig, books of short stories were published by Iron) in the Community Centre. Sunday saw a celebratory mural (if that’s the…