The Last of Sherlock

We’ve been rewatching the four series of Sherlock – the BBC series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman broadcast between 2010 and 2017: what has been called a Sherlock for the 21st century. More accurately, it might be called a Sherlock for the Cameron years. Certainly, the first series has a sort of quaint nostalgic …

Blott in the Age of Brexit

I’ve always said that the history of Brexit is being written by Tom Sharpe, that writer of brutal farces in which the most awful events escalate without mercy, British society is shown to be rotten through and through, and civilised values are not upheld with anything except the most perfunctory lip service. I have been …

The Light Brigade (Re-Charged)

The following is an unrespectable rewrite of Tennyson’s 1854 poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” I wrote, if that’s the word, this version back in 2018, in the context of a wilfully ruinous Brexit. As such, there is a kind of satirical intent, but my version is not intended to be funny. I only …

Wasps in the Beehive

This is going to be about Terry Pratchett. But it will also be about the much more trivial matter of who rules us and what we can do about it. Due to the things I want to say, there will certainly be spoilers, particularly about the Terry Pratchett novels “Guards! Guards!”, “Witches Abroad” and “Lords …

Dog’s Breakfast

Let’s talk about Brexit. We all recall how it started. David Cameron, way back when he was Prime Minister (remember that?), agreed to hold a referendum on membership of the European Union, in order to unite his party and lay that whole silly business to rest. Well, as we know, it didn’t turn out quite …