Project Fear: The Novel that Never Was
- July 13, 2020
- by
- Matt
All writers know that not all their ideas get off the ground. Sometimes you come up with an idea that you think has potential, but then your agent or publisher says no for all kinds of reasons that you don’t anticipate. So here’s what happened with a pitch that I failed to launch a while back. Consider it a salutary tale, or just one of those little setbacks that can occur in any writer’s life from time to time. Anyway, this is the conversation that ensued when I made the following pitch to my...
Brexit: Springtime for Racists
- February 03, 2020
- by
- Matt
For anyone seeking inspiration in these dark times, I recommend the moving Storyville documentary My Italian Secret: Italy’s Forgotten Heroes. It tells the story of the Italian cyclist Gino Bartali and the Italians who saved more than 10,000 Jews from Nazi extermination during World War 2, by hiding them or smuggling them to safety. Like...
Independence Day
- January 31, 2020
- by
- Matt
More than four years after the referendum that plunged the UK into what has been the most bitter and divisive political crisis in its history, we have finally reached the day that so many Brexiters have dreamed of and yearned for. For many of those who voted and campaigned to leave the European Union, today...
Chronicle of a Coup Foretold
- December 20, 2019
- by
- Matt
A week on, there is no way you can really look on the 2019 General Election that makes it feel any better than it did on the night. The bare facts speak for themselves. The single greatest concentration of conmen, chancers, fanatics and incompetents in British political history have been given a majority by the...
All Hail to the Monster
- September 26, 2019
- by
- Matt
Readers of this blog will probably know that I’m not a great fan of Boris Johnson. In fact it would be safe to say that I despise him as much as any British politician I have ever witnessed in my lifetime. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly why. It might be the constant...
The Strange Tale of the Disappearing Country
- September 22, 2019
- by
- Matt
I’ve been abroad in the Pyrenees for nearly three weeks now and it was, as it always is these days, a huge relief to be away from these septic isles. Of course you don’t forget them. Nowadays, you take Brexit with you in your mental baggage, even if you never meant to pack it. It’s...
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