The Book Review Show The Review Show

On the Book Review Show tonight, A Clockwork Orange hits50. Why are we

still talking about the book, the film and now the app.

100 years of film censorship, sensational stories from inside the

BBFC. A new novel from the creator of

Reginald Perrin, The Fall And Rise of Gordon Coppinger. Yet another

new book from David Foster Wallace, who died four years ago.

And a collection in which Oliver Sachs tackles hallucinations, and

reveals his own student drug trips. "I want to see indigo now!"

Music there by Brubeck, who died on Wednesday.

Joining me -- Dave Brubeck, who died on Wednesday. Joing me are

Edward Docx, Matthew Sweet, and novelist AL Kennedy. As queer as A

Clockwork Orange, that old London expression, meaning completely mad,

caught the magpie imagination of Anthony Burgess, and became the

title of his most famous novel, of course, that controversial film. To

mark the 50th anniversary of the novel, a new edition has been

published, alongside an app, which reveals much of Burgess's original

thinking. A Clockwork Orange, is, the

autobiograical confession of Alex, a juvenile delinquent, whose

criminal excesses are dealt with aversion therapy. The book has been

adapted for stage and screen, most famously by Stanley Kubrick, in

1971. There was me, that is Alex, and my three druids, that is Pete,

Georgie and Dim. We sat on the milk bar, trying to decide what to do

with the evening. After accusations that the film had inspired several

acts of copycat violence, Kubrick himself asked for it to be

withdrawn. The fact that the film was unavailable in the UK until

after the director's death in 1999, only added to its infamey.

My brothers, would you believe your faithful friend and long-suffering

narator, pushed out his nazek a mile-and-a-half to lick his puts.

The language of the book, a mixture of Russian and Cockney, shows the

breath of multilingual Burgess'sal lefpbts. He maintained, despite A

Clockwork Orange being his best- known work, it was the one he liked

least. Never the less he acknowledged its serious inaccident.

I was present concerned with presenting a theme of my background,

the theme of a man's free will, the existence of good and evil, and the

necessity to choose between the two. If we are creatures of choice, we

must have two things to choose between. The app, for the iPad,

includes the original musical scores and scripts, plus an

interview with the author himself. 50 years on, with A Clockwork

Orange having less power to shock, does it give us a different

appreciation of Burgess's work, or do the themes of violence and

redemption still resonate. With this kind of distance of the

decades, a long time now since the stpim came out, do you think it

means he -- the film came out, do you think it means we can

appreciate it in a different way and context? I hadn't read it for a

very long time. I hate to say, work of genius, but it truly stands up.

He absolutely is addressing issues that will probably always be

relevant. The older generation will always be wondering what the

younger generation is getting up to, what young violent men are getting

up to. People will always wonder if two wrongs will make a right. He

puts that out there. He just gallops across, enormous issues,

very beautifully. You know Alex is this ultra violent, dreadful,

possibly you would describe him as evil, person, he loves high art,

and that is supposed to elevate you. It wouldn't necessarily make you a

better person, if you were a sociopath, just listening to

Beethoven. But he really is extraordinary. Again, idea of

predicting that we would end up speaking partly eastern European.

That will probably become true in about 20 years, not for the reasons

he thought. But he will be right. But the language he creates is

extraordinary. I can remember when I first read the novel, I found it

terrifying, and then after a while you begin to immediately understand

what all the words are? The great strength of this book is it is so

linguistically alive, that quote that we saw there, the next line is

something like "it was a filthy dark, winter bastard night, though

dry". The language, the cadance of it, the engagment with the language,

both the English and Nasdak, that is the Russian for "teen speak", it

is just compelling and powerful. Add to that it is so disturbing,

both disturbing to read, because you have to encounter these words,

but also disturbing in subject matter, and add to that, as Alison

says, it is about everything, it is about masculinity, alienation, it

is about God, it is about crime and punishment, it is about every

single possible important subject, or so it seems. It is bound to have

endured. I think also one other small point I would make, it is a

novel, I think, that sits in a long tradition, if you go back to Pinkie

in Brighton Rock, you can pick up the early part of Alex, and look

forward to American Psycho, people say why was there never a British

psycho novel, this is it. In American Psycho they kill a

homeless person, just as the dDrugs do early on. What shocked me re-

reading it, the film was firmly in my eyes, rembering that Alex was a

15-year-old, amoral. That is one of the things when you are reading it

in this form, reminds you that it is very much a product of the early

60s. He has those ant anti-seedents, but he has also characters from 50s

films. All that world is present here.

That language is a palarie, it alludes to things, the words that

sound like other words, you get at their meaning. There is a note of

the Catcher in the Rye, he uses the word "old" a lot. It is, what is

extraordinary is it is so timeless, I was thinking while reading t I

can't think of a more disturbing novel, that I have read,

subsequently. American Psycho, as you say, tries to do the same thing,

but is some how slightly flatter. This is so powerful. He's doing

something so technically difficult, to commit yourself to having a huge

person zone that of your vocabulary unknown to the reader, but perfect

context so none of it gets lost, and no glossary. It is beautiful

and melodic and memorable, he manages to portray evil, truly,

truly, truly, without rubbing your face in it, that is so difficult.

thought that was interesting from the clip we played there, where he

talked about free will, being necessary to choose between good

and evil. That is embodied in it absolutely. It is also interesting

on the app, to hear Burgess reading the book in his own voice, not just

the own voice but the hyperman countryian own voice. The Holloways

hole does it in an a whiney estuary voice, with Malcolm McDowell

playing the part, it should be done like Stanly Holloway doing Albert

and the Lion. It is so cuddly when he talks about it. It is fussy and

as if todayous. And charming and funny. Let's not forget the first

people the Drugs beat up is a writer, writing the a clock work

orange. The attack on Stanley Kubrick written in there itself. I

think it also had Burgess's own handwriting on the type script,

where he was playing about with some the words he was going to use.

The type script brings home how quickly it was written. I'm not

dead sure, I think he wrote four books in a year, of which this was

one. It came to him in a kind of extended speed dream, almost. It

was on the page before he knew it. It also reveal how much he got paid

for it, �150, that is about �6,000 in today's money. The reader's

report was very worried about it, it was either going to nowhere or

do something. They were ambivalent in the publishers. The marketing

plan for A Clockwork Orange, it would be a doomed freak of a book,

or it could catch on! We can agree it certainly did catch on. When it

moved from book to screen, the violent scenes attracted the

attention of the censors, who, controversially, allowed the film

to be shown. That landmark case for the British board of film censors,

what it was called then, that is described in a new book marking its

centinary, back then a film could be banned, in 1912 for holding the

king's uniform to contempt. Look away if you are squeamish.

In the 1930s, faced with a wave of American horror firms, the BBFC

created the H-rating, the first adults-only classification, later

renamed the X-certificate, it proved so attractive to audiences,

that some Companies Actively sought it. Hammer, the company that taste

forgot, in the board's review, deliberately tested what was

permissible. Their first adventure into horror, the Quatermass

Experiment. The BBFC found itself at the centre of national debates

about the portrayal of women, the representation of war and the

decriminalisation of homosexuality. In Victim gay men fall victim to

the fortunes of blackmailer. should I fall victim. You are a

fashion, if young people know how you live, might they not follow.

Youth must be protected, we agree. As the BBFC's role became more

about classification than censorship, it regularly did battle

with the film industry, determined to maximise audiences. In order to

have a PG rating, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom lost a gory

sacrifice, only reinstated in the Blu-ray release.

The book also relates how the BBFC found itself under attack over

called video nasties, after the murder of James Bulger, some

newspapers and politicians claimed it had become too lenient. In 2004,

9 Songs, the rudest film ever to hit our cinemas, according to the

Mirror, was passed, uncut. But last year's The Human Centipede, was not

allowed any classification. Its decisions may be controversial, but

this book charts how the board has attempted to reflect Britain's

changing attitudes towards sex and violence.

We know the story of A Clockwork Orange, controversial but did get

shown N this book we have a whole century of people in the past have

found to be shocking? I think the main joy in reading this book, is

really it is a litmus of a kind of national morality, as you move from

100 years ago to now. You see how the board has changed what it

passes and what it doesn't. I was very interested in 9 Songs, that

was the first time real sex had been in a film. And that was very

difficult for them, because they felt if they passed that, it opened

the flood gates. But the one thing I took away from reading this, is

how sensible and well regulated this group of people were. How they

tried, admirably, often, to walk the balance between freedom and

censorship. The funnyiest thing is the people hammering them, night

and day, the press, who spend the whole time saying free speech, free

speech, every time there is a slightly questionable film, they

come running after them saying you shouldn't put it on the screen, you

are ruining the nation and all children will copy it. That was

very amusing. Did you find it amusing how morays had changed over

time? Yes and how they hadn't. The status quo always seems to involve

the working-classes being equated with children, they are easily led,

and many things they shouldn't be exposed to, prostitutes can't be in

films, because unintelligent people won't have heard about them,

homosexuality, everyone will want to try it if you put it on

television. It is sort of funny, but also horribly toxic, this

strange reaction against women showing sexual pleasure. That, some

how was awful, the idea of women having fun. And lesbianism? Oh my

God. Killing of Sister George caused them huge problems?

could imagine a little bit of gentlemen back-scuttling, a tiny

suggestion, women they couldn't get. These fights between Jimmy Sangster

and the Hammer Horror people. You often saw, underneath, a less funny

thing, how to hold the status quo, by prevending that political

control is about protecting sexual morality, and lately it is about

controlling sensitivity to religions, but it is about keeping

the status quo. It is about the general liberal organisation trying

to manage progress in this department. On the whole it is a

good story. What kind of makes me slightly depressed about the

situation now is, the debates about censorship happen over such

marginal films, The Human Send peed 2, who cares. These debates were

played out on screen 1 in the Odeon. We have lost something there.

book documents debates about Indiana Jones, and Harry Potter?

They are important too. What is really rich about it, is the biways,

and I must say -- byways, I found myself dismayed by how many of the

films I had seen. I will confess now, I have seen The Wife Swappers,

it is absolutely shocking, the wall paper is awful. The chief of the

wife swappers is played by the man who was Captain bird's Eye. These

things are traumatic, but it is a comic his treatment despite the

paralysingly forward that the head of the organisation now has

contributed. I slightly wanted, apart from the fact they keep

referring to research that they don't have access to, it was

strange that they picked so many different people from different

backgrounds, they do say they have the decade, here are the key films,

here is what happens, here is who is in charge. This is what the

press have lied about and beat them over the head with. You don't get,

here is what some of the psychological research was based on,

and why we don't show this, because we think it is a trigger for

violent behaviour. Here is a background in research about

whether people actually do copycat crimes. It was a little bit, it is

a history, but it was thin on the links between films like Texas

Chainsaw Massacre, and Dawn of the Dead, and Vietnam, because people

were coming out of that experience, and truly feeling that people

walking around alive were the dead walking, because eventually you

would be meat. That whole social background wasn't there. It is a

collection of essays, not written by one person, it is a lot of

different perspectives, it is a dip in and out. I wouldn't enjoy

reading the book cover-to-cover, I opened it to the pages to seeing a

picture I liked, I recognised it and read the back story. Very

interesting about the Harry Potter and the death he witnesses, I read

that, A Clockwork Orange I read. That it would be an academic job to

read it all the way through. The early stuff is fascinating, the

fact that the National Council for Public Morals, an organisation

worried about the weakening of the British race. They worried that

some how going to the cinema is kind of making people weak and

decision apatiented, they are copying things on -- dissipated,

they are copying things on the screen. It is a health campaign, to

do with hygiene, stopping people doing dirty things in dirty

auditoriums. I will definitely look at it again, and find out about the

Wife Swappers. David Nobbs didn't get where he is today without

knowing a thing or two about writing comedy His latest novel,

The Fall And Rise of Gordon Coppinger, is described his

business publishers, as the spiritual follow-up to a 1960s

trilogy, The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin. David Nobbs has

been writing for 50 years, he began as a contributor to the hit Siral

kal show, That Was The Week That Was, he went on to write sketches

for Frankie Howard, Tommy Cooper and The Two Ronies. Good evening,

I'm squeaking to you tonight, once again, as the chairman for the

loyal society for the prevention of piss-pronunciation. But it was the

depressed, middle-aged, middle manager at Sunshine Deserts, who

captured millions' imagination. What about sex? It is great fun.

What sort of a sex angle are we going for? I don't know, how about

something like, just off the top of my head, I like to stroke my nipple

with a strawberry ripple. character of the 19th novel is the

hugely rich and highly corrupt Gordon Coppinger. His life is

punctuated with daily exchanges between him and his butler

Faringdon. Faringdon got down to business, with all the newspapers

pages that mentioned him, Times business page 2, Sun page 2.

Coppinger a fill landering financier, with his own yacht,

skyscraper and football club, slowly wakes up his-to-his own

inadequacies, he find himself tapping into an all together

strange and foreign emotion. "with the regret came, yes, love, not

lust, not desire, it was his first experience, he wouldn't have

thought of the word, but there was no alternative for it, spiritual

love". Nobbs says that Coppinger is the story of a man whom the world

slowly drives sane. The opposite of Perrin, whom the world drovelyly

mad. -- slowly mad, but has he been wise to invite comparison between

the two. Does Coppinger do for the 2010s, what Perrin did for the

1970s. So, Matthew, the, The Fall And Rise

of Gordon Coppinger, clearly referring back to Reginald Perrin,

this is a very contemporary setting? Absolutely, spookily,

there are references to the Vujadin Savic says in this. He must have

been -- Jimmy Saville case in this, he must have been waiting by the

printing press. It is strangely archaic too, it is very much rooted

in post-war comic writing. In this tramps drink meths, they don't now,

they drink Tennan it's Super. But that world is preserved in the

novel. If you look at a cartoon in a newspaper, you might see drunk

with crossed eyes, or two men on a desert island with one palm tree.

G I found myself thinking this is very much about spending time in a

1970s toilet, with a man trying to make a Canary Wharf film of Carry

On, it was thin. By page 56 a line went something like, the day had

been strangely about urine, I thought why am I reading this. The

characters were cardboard and cliched. The football player called

Bogoff, the manager called Thickness, the secretary called

Grimaldi, more grim than aldi. The description of sex, it was like he

raised her rates of interest and then made his deposit. That wasn't

the worst of it. The worst of it was when the novel tried to do the

intropex and analysis of culture that would have embarrassed Boris

Johnson. It was cringey, I'm afraid. I find not much to love. Say what

you really think? I thought there was plenty of good gags in this

book. I'm amused by the idea of a patriot. Bum gags! A man so

patriotic that the company he has manufacturing coffee is called

National Espresso, there are things that are delightful in that. I

don't think it is the best thing he has ever written. I think some how

this novel is in dialogue with the work of Jonathan Coe, the great

advocate of David Nobbs. His quote is on the front. If you read it

together with the privacy of Maxwell Simm, Co-'s last novel, --

Coe, it is almost like they should get together and write something.

It made me panic for Coe, someone else wrote "witty" on the back, I

worried for them. Who is it written for? I don't think it is for you. I

think it is for gentlemen who wear pink elephant corduroy trousers,

and and coming to the conclusion that Tony Blair isn't entirely

honest, it explains some of the financial crisis for those who

don't understand the market. doesn't explain the financial

crisis that hit the market. It is a caricature of a 70s businessman.

lot of modern books about the financial crisis, the bankers are

all villains, he tries to make us sympathise with the predicament of

some of them? The difference is, with Reginald Perrin, he has the

perfect character for his gift. The Reginald Perrin character is

frustrated, cornered, and able to remark, amusingly, on being

underpowered. The problem with Gordon Coppinger is he has the

world at his feet. That mode of discourse, of somebody who is

finding things a bit bemusing doesn't work with the character who

is powerful. Can he really be portrayed as an underdog? I'm not

sure. This is rather like Reginald Perrin narrated by CJ. From the man

in the position of power. What bothered me about it, the parallels

between Reginald Perrin may have been imposed by his publishers,

actually, who wanted, he wanted to call it Coppinger, I think, and the

title. He makes jokes in the book, when Gordon Coppinger is talking

about disappearing, he does say at one point, should he put the

clothes on the beach and disapee, somebody says it has been done?

title of the description of what happens in the book is not terribly

accurate. It is not, he's not an underdog, Reginald Perrin was the

underdog who said the unsayable, this man is allowed to say the

unsayable all the time. At one point we are being asked to take

seriously the familiaral relationship. There were a couple

of feens scenes I enjoyed between the father and the daughter, I

began to be engaged, and thought it was a book to invest emotional

energy into it, then it's back to the Carry On jokes. It is funny,

the man burning to death in the pie factory. I think the pie factory

apparently led vegetarians all around the country to decide they

had to start eating meat again. Over four decades, the neurologist,

Oliver Sachs, has attempted to explain the mechanics of the human

brain to a general readership. Best known for his books, The Man Who

Mistook His Wife For A Hat, and Awakenings, this latest foray into

the mind is called Hallucinations. Sachs's books give eloquent and

often entertaining accounts of his patient, they have earned him a

reputation as the accessible voice of neuroscenes. He was even

immortalised in the film version of Awakenings, played by Robin

Williams. Where are my glasss? your face. Sachs calls his new book

an anthology of hallucinations. He begins with Rosalie, a woman in her

90s suffering from Charles Bonnet syndrome. Named after the 18th

century Swiss scientist, who suffered hallucinations when his

own eyesight failed. "When I arrived and greeted her, I was

surprised to see she was completely blind. Though she had not seen

anything at all for several years, she was now seeing things right in

front of her. "What sort of things?" I asked. "People in

eastern dress in drapes, walking up and down stairs" she exclaimed. I

observed that while she was hallucinating her eyes were open,

and even though she could see nothing, her eyes moved here and

there, as if looking at an actual scene." For the very first time,

Sachs writes about his own youthful experiments with drugs, which he

believes helped him empathise with patients throughout the years.

long wanted to see true indigo, and thought drugs might be the way to

do this. So, one sunny Saturday in 1964, I developed a farm ma logic

launch pad consisting of basic amphetamine for general arousal,

and LSD for all Luis nation intensity, and a touch of cannabis

for a little added delerium. About 20 minutes after taking this, I

faced a white wall and excomplaipld, and said "I want to see ind -- and

exclaimed, and said "I want to see indigo now". Has it silenced

crickets who baulk at Sachs's anecdotes, and accused him of a man

who has mistaken patients for a literary career. What struck me is

the range of hallucinations there are, people hearing, seeing,

smelling things that aren't there, in many different ways? It is

remarkable. In previous times he quotes the experiment where people

said they had an auditry perception, and they were immediately diagnosed

as skets Frenchic and locked up for long periods of time. An experiment

-- skets Frenchic and -- skits sow Frenchic and locked foup for a long

time. He does say sometimes when people go blind their mechanisms of

themselves produce things to see, and produce things a comforting

near-death experience, and it is merciful. On the other hand he was

quietly saying, maybe all of the supernatural things we believe in,

and maybe heaven and hell and Gods and angels are all based on the

fact that we hallucinate a lot more than we think, most people won't

admit it, because it tends to make people think you are nuts. I found

some of it quite terrifying to read. The fear that the reading of it

might make it happen to you? Don't you want it to happen to you while

you are reading it. Sachs describes hall Luisating as an essential part

of human experience -- hall Luisating as an -- hallucinating as

part of the human experience. I had one of these things when I had a

job on a potting machine, I had to stare at it all day and I could

still see it when I closed my eyes. The idea is experiments done on

students weren't allowed to see anything? You are deprived of all

stimulation, you begin to find it yourself. It is something I

actually have seen in my own relatives. My grandfather, before

he died, thought he could see his own life projected on a screen in

the room in which he died. It is all very vivid, all this material.

I particularly was engaged with the idea of bereavement hallucinations,

and how common they were, and a possible explanation for when

people think they are seeing ghosts of loved ones? The book was

fascinating, for all of the reasons we are saying. He is very good on

bereavement, and the moment between sleep and being awake. My one minor

gripe with it, if you like. I felt there was a little whiff of the

Rushdie, a little kind of, there is a brilliant passage. You might be

hallucinating that? There is a brilliant passage where he talks

about his own hallucination, he has just finished a book on migraine,

there is nobody with the humanity and science to write the book he

has been reading. He has the hallucination, and a voice says you

are the man why don't you do it. His main hallucination is to remind

himself how good he is. One of the criticisms made of him in the past,

is he has exploited his patients and their stories. The fact that he

is willing to talk about what has happened to him, may take the sting

of that away to a certain degree? On the one hand you are thinking,

OK, because you are Oliver Sachs, people will give you the material

for the next boob. On the other hand, he sits there -- book. And on

the other hand, he sits there and gets thousands of e-mails a year

and tries to help people, and demonstrates what a proper doctor

and diagnosis is, take the story of the person, if you can't cure them,

explain what is wrong and give them that comfort. If you can find out

what is wrong and get them cured, why not. There is a big story

emerging. The inescapability of culture. There is the woman who

hallucinates Kermit the frog, and says he means nothing to me. When

Sachs has his own hallucination, this is after he has taken LSD, he

imagines a spider talking to hill, not in the voice of BertramRussell,

but in the voice of Jonathan Miller's impersonation of Bertram

Russell. I admired the humanity of the book.

If you take it with all of his other books, especially the

Musicophilia, which I love, you get this sense of a man trying to

understand human beings through the mind. It is such a life project,

and such a wonderful body of work. As in so many of his books, the

science is beautifully clear, isn't it? It is beautiful and clear, and

he's trying to commune kai. He's talking about things that are very

-- Communicate. He's talk about things that are difficult to

understand. He's very gently, but devastatingly critical of the sort

of mental health establishment who don't take time. And who completely,

it is horrifying the image of becoming older and losing some of

your faculties, and people just assuming that you are barmy.

think that game across extremely clearly in Michael Sachs's book,

Hallucinations. Both Flesh And Not is the third book by David Foster

Wallace, to be published since his death in 2008, though he Best

Friends known for Infinite Jest, he was also a prolific -- he is best

known for Infinite Jest, he was also a prolific essay writer.

This beacon tains those. Federer Both Flesh And Not, the first essay,

is a meticulous desection of his style of play at the 2007 season.

"genius is not rep cable. Inspiration is contagious and

multiform. Seeing it close up, power and aggression made

vulnerable to beauty, is to feel inspired, and in a fleet, immortal

way, reconciled. Towards the end of the book comes his introduction to

the Best American Essays 12007. His comments there -- 2007. His

comments give a poignant insight into Wallace's own state of mind.

The total noise the sound of our US culture right now, a culture of

info, spin, rhetoric and context, that I know I'm not alone in

finding too much to absorb, much less to try to make sense of, or

organise into any kind of tryage of sail yency or value. David Foster

Wallace is an author who inspires tagsate devotion from fans, is this

-- devotion from fans. Should its publication be soundtracked by the

noise of a barrel being scraped? David Foster Wallace is one of

those writers who commands huge cult status almost. Do you think

this book of essays is for the fan club, or a wider readership will

engage? I am one of those fans. But I think this book is not just for

the fans. I'm a reluctant fan, I thought The Pale King is nothing

like as good as everyone seems to say it is. This is a wonderful

companion with a man totally engaged with the vast culture in

which we now live. You watch him developing through the essays, and

trying toe get more of a handle on. That I know you will complain about

the foot notes, he's like watching a football player doing keepy-ups

while there is a game on. I realise that about him. But you have to

admire his language and love of language. No you don't! You can't

start a sentence "and, but, so" and expect it to end well. You can't

talk about consentric because it doesn't mean. I found myself

revolving in my grave on his behalf, because I'm sure the essays weren't

put out in his life, he wouldn't copy edited them. He wouldn't have

had two descriptions of somebody serving in tennis. He wouldn't have

repeated triage standing there like a dead horse in a field. The first

essay on tennis was outstanding? is extraordinary, it is an essay

about Roger Federer, the sermon John Dunne would have given by

Roger Federer. It describes what he does in terms that, you know, maybe

something that would occur to somebody deeply involved in it. I

know anything about t I was enthralled. Most of the rest of it,

however, I could have happily lived without. Some of it is absolutely

embarrassing. The essay where he thinks age is a good thing.

misjudgment of the aids crisis, it will -- AIDS crisis, it will

sharpen up our relationships! one of the greatest writers of the

last 20 years. Being embarrassed in public after his death. In all of

the essays, you don't really always want to go sa see a huge Beethoven

sich knee, sometimes you want something small -- sich niece,

sometimes -- symphony, sometimes you want something smaller. The

piece about how he chose being a deciderer. The piece on writing is

beautiful and heart-breaking. is three great pieces. Out of an

essay with more than that, it is embarrassing, he would have been

mortified, you know's a total pedant, he makes fun of that, it

would have made his skin crawl. He talks about the abyss of fiction

being emptiness and nothingness. And the abyss of non-fiction.

wasn't sure of the decision of the publishers to include the writer's

list of words between each chapter? These are things salvaged from his

hard drive, aren't they. humiliating him again, you made him

spot the word for that month that he hammered into the sentence that

shouldn't have been there and is uncommunive. It demonstrates how

you can get tired of fine writing. I don't think it is, it is very

engaged. When he approaches a subject, he does so with absolute

engagment. Be that tennis, or writing, I agree the AIDS essay is

one of the worst. Cinema? That is a niave essay, the one on Terminator

2, don't give film makers too much money they will squander it.

says something interesting about women, it is the only films with

women not sexualised but maternal. He has never less than engaging. I

have read all of his essays, I would say two or three of the best

of them are in this book. Let's move on to something, I hope you

will find more agreement. It is that time of year when everybody

seems to be choosing the best Book of the Year. We have asked each

panellist to choose one book that they thought deserved a bit more

attention than it has received so far. The book I enjoyed most was

Nicholas Rhodes biography of Keats, it takes us to the medical room

when he was a student. And talks about radical Enfield, this hot bed

of new ideas and new thinking. Terrific and beautifully written.

Vultures' Picnic by Greg Palace, an old school investigative journalist,

largely funded by charities now, because no-one can afford it. It

beautifully explains so many outrageous things about the power

industry. And about the financial skullduggery, if you want to know

why Greece is broke, it explains very clearly why Greece is broke,

beautiful book f they implemented Leveson at all, there would be

enough room for that kind of journalism to exist again, instead

of lots of gossip about celebrities who have been out with no knickers.

I'm going to say Thomas Penn's Winter King, it is a wonderful

biography of Henry VII, it combines fantastic scholarship with great

story telling. The best history Book of the Year. The book that got

unjustly trashed, Lionel Asbo, I thought it was a return to form for

Amis. I injod it very much. were snorting there? That was an

advertant. Our panels had different views? They were wrong.

I asked on Twitter, what some of the books people suggested, there

were a few came up, Hawthorn and Child, Keith Ridgeway. The one I

liked best was from Wayne he suggested Fifty Shades of Grey, he

said it was a sleeper but with a push could be popular. My thanks to

Edward Docx, AL Kennedy and Matthew Sweet. As usual we will find

details of everything we have discussed tonight on our website.

Now next week Kirsty is going to be back, with a show packed with

Christmas treats, Matthew Bourne's new version of Sleeping Beauty, the

Spice Girls movie, Viva Forever, and the sequel to the Snowman, he

has a snowdog. Had she lived, Beryl Bainbridge would have celebrated