Liz Hodgkinson

I had only vaguely heard of the welfare-to-work company A4e before the scandal broke. Until then I had no idea of the scale of payments made to the company bu the government; that's us, the taxpayer. Nor did I know that Emma Harrison, the charismatic, pushy woman who started the company, pocketed over £8 million last year of public money. The contracts awarded by the government to this company ran into the hundreds of millions of pounds. Yet why was this outsourced in the first place?

As I understand it, A4e (Action for Employment) is a training company which imparts skills to the long-term unemployed to get them back into work. But they can't get them back into work if there are no jobs so I'm wondering what sort of skills they impart? Presumably they don't offer degrees in law or medicine, or train people to be plumbers and electricians, or do they? I suspect the 'training' is more of the rather vague confidence-building type than actually imparting valuable new work skills which would guarantee work, such as computer programming or gas fitting.

Anyway, it doesn't look good that a company which purports to be a public service kind of business, rather like a charity, should have its executives living so high on the hog. Harrison and her family live in a huge mansion house, paid for entirely with government contracts. Has A4e actually increased the UK's GDP? I doubt it. It also seems as though the jobs that they secure for their trainees are very low level - supermarket shelf stacking and so on - rather than getting these people into high-level or professional type jobs. One supposes that if they are off benefits and paying tax, then A4e is doing its job -- but what I can't understand is why the contracts were so huge in the first place? Apparently it's an Australian idea which flourished during the Howard administration.

The Leveson Inquiry has got us thinking about journalism as never before. But what Lord Leveson and the various barristers don't quite understand is that you need a particular mindset to be a journalist in the first place. So what is that mindset? First of all you need to be curious. Then you have to want to communicate. Then you have to have a sense of fun and be irreverent and iconoclastic. You have a desire to be dramatic, to want to shake people up, startle them, report what has never been reported before. Above all, you want to find out.

It's not so much that you want to get information by illegal or questionable means, as that any means which will secure a good story can be considered. I know that when I worked on tabloid newspapers, the thing was always the story. Of course mobile phones, emails and the internet had not been invented so the methods we had to secure exclusive, startling or groundbreaking stories were more primitive. But there was always that overriding desire to nail a really good story -- and sometimes, it has to be said, to take that story a little further than it would actually go.

For journalists are storytellers,loving to spin a good yarn. Journalists are gossipy blabbermouths; they are the kind of people who were always told to stop talking at school. They are not so showbizzy as actual performers but there is a showbiz side to them. Then they are tough - or at least, they become so. They are caught up in the drama of the unfolding story, whether this is cruel treatment of animals in medical laboratories, corrupt coppers, wars or shenanigans in the town hall. It doesn't much matter -- so long as there is conflict and drama, a journalist will be there.

Do they want to get at the truth? Well, the best ones do but on newspapers, especially tabloids, you are always chasing circulation, so an exclusive about a celebrity, a footballer, a politician, is almost irresistible. Could anybody actually have resisted the Max Mosley story? Although few people outside the motor racing fraternity had heard of him, everybody had heard of Oswald Mosley, fascists and Nazism and the Mitford family was also famous. But obviously for a tabloid readership, it was the Nazi theme that was uppermost in interest.

As for Milly Dowler, well that was a big story, too, and there is always competition to take any big story further.

But now we have the sad spectacle of rich celebrities like Charlotte Church taking huge sums of money from News International for phone hacking. Yet another photo opportunity for the singer! Few people will feel that sorry for celebrities who court publicity when it suits them, but phone hacking is an illegal activity and that is that. It is not clear how an activity that was actually illegal was allowed, or how it went on for so long and very possibly at the end of the day there was little harm done. Of course the celebs have bigged it up, but their lives go on much the same as before.

Or do they? The press, at least in the olden days, had subtle ways of getting its own back and one of those was not to give any publicity to celebrities who had challenged them. Perhaps now Church will be forgotten, unable to get herself in the paper when she wants to. The same may happen with Hugh Grant.

As to the lawyers, they are not, in the main, flashy or publicity-seeking people. True, there are some exceptions like the late John Mortimer, Helena Kennedy, Geoffrey Robertson and the late George Carman but in the main, they are not witty, iconclastic, original or quirky thinkers, but fairly dull mainstream people, even though they may be clever. They are simply not the same breed as journalists and this shows at the inquirty.

Mind, the inquiry also shows up just how scripted comedians and 'funny' broadcasters are. Although Ian Hislop is scathingly witty on Have I Got News For You, his wit did not shine at the same level when giving evidence at Leveson. He did his usual mugging and gurning, but the rapier wit was not there, even though he tried. It just proves how difficult it is to be genuinely witty off the cuff.

But what of the future of journalism? Well, it will be dead -- or at least, professional-quality journalism will be dead, if Leveson manages to kill the great British press off even more than the internet, bloggers, falling circulations and advertising, and ever growing reluctance of people to spend a bob or two on a daily newspaper.

Many media commentators, particularly in The Guardian Money section, have inveighed against landlords, depicting them as greedy grasping moneymakers, intent on squeezing all they can out of poor hapless tenants. For most of us it's not like that at all. We became landlords for no other reason than we wished to secure some kind of reasonable income for ourselves in our old age. Pensions didn't do it, savings didn't do it, and the expectation that we would be able to work and earn money into our dotage, didn't do it either. So, we invested in property because there seemed nothing else, quite simply, on offer. So we bought properties which we hoped we might be able to rent out for a reasonable return. There was not much money involved; tenants only paid so much and there were endless rules and regulations to follow and properties had to be kept up to attract decent tenants. The situation now is that if there was any other way we could get a decent return on our money, virtually none of us would be landlords. It is a thankless task. You expend huge sums of money on buying your property, then come up against a raft of legal obligations which, quite honestly, negate the whole thing -- 'protecting' the deposits -- yet another way that insurance companies and the like can cream off huge sums from tenants or landlords - and then there are all these daft certificate, all of which cost money. If there were any other way of getting a decent return on our money, we wouldn't bother. It is simply too much hassle and we don't want to be bothered. We have not chosen to be in the hospitality industry, and we don't really want to be bothered with tenants' queries and complaints. So many people have entered the buy to let market thinking it's a way of getting good returns on capital and hen discover they have entered a ghastly minefield they could have avoided if only they could have got a decent return on interest at the bank. so -- please don't blame all the amateur landlords in the country fo ripping off tenants. It just is not the reality.
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The non-Murdoch media has predictably been crowing over the phone hacking scandal presently engulfing the Murdoch empire - New International and Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks and others have appeared before a House of Commons select committee. But what does it all mean, in reality? Yes it is totally unacceptable that the phones of murder victims werek hacked -- and yet one can see how it happened. The Milly Dowler case was high-profile and although her family may not have sought publicity, they were sucked into by the murder of their daughter. And really, that is what tabloid newspapers like the News of the World have always been about - getting deeper into the story than weekly papers and giving the public something salacious to read on Sundays. Celebrities cannot really complain as they seek publicity at every turn and assiduously put themselves in the public eye at every opportunity. Their publicists are always contacting newspapers with stories and pictures to keep them in the public eye and if a newspaper gets hold of a story they don't want published, well, too bad. They can't suddenly cry for privacy. Wasn't it Lord Northcliffe who said that news is what someone, somewhere, doesn't want publishing and that everything else was advertising?

We have to ask ourselves what journalism is and remember that newspapers, unlike the BBC, are commercial enterprises which can only keep going if people buy them and advertisers advertise in them. The BBC, which has been ferocious in its condemnation of Murdoch, sits comfortably cushioned by the licence fee which it is a criminal offence not to pay. OK, that doesn't necessarily give other forms of media not so protected a free hand to use any dirty tricks they can, but unless the commercial media makes money, it goes down the pan. Do we really want only state-subsidised media informing us?

We need more newspapers not fewer and with the demise of the News of the World -- not that anybody will miss if if they're honest - that leaves one less mass outlet in the country. And there is probably not going to be a replacement unless News International comes up with a Sun on Sunday -- which they might of course, when all this has died down, if ever it dies down. It is the biggest scandal to hit print media since Murdoch removed all his newspapers to Wapping and changed the face of the British press, in 1986. Then, Murdoch called the tune; now he is being called to account instead. What a change

The story of the Southern Cross care home company should make us all think and ponder hard. It's something which should never have happened, never have been allowed to happen. Briefly, somewhere along the lines somebody saw a way of making big bucks from these vulnerable elderly people and the local councils who were responsible for the care of those who could not afford to pay for themselves. Instead of being non-profit, these homes, or their owners at least, began to view both the actual premises and the old people who lived in them as cash cows.
Many of us thought - if indeed we gave it any thought - that local authority care homes were owned by the local authorities. But no, they were privately owned by people who instigated a 'business model' whereby these homes would generate millions of pounds for everybody connected with them. Southern Cross, a relatively small company in 2004, began buying up care homes all over the country and then selling them to landlords who leased them back to Southern Cross. This model meant, or should have meant, that everybody would win. The landlords would keep getting rent rises, the properties themselves would keep increasing in value and the local authorities, who were paying for 80% of the residents, would keep shelling out ever more money to keep these old people in the care homes.

The cynical view here was that old people are living for ever longer, it is a sector which is going to keep growing, so why not take advantage of it?

The business model worked so long as everything went ever upwards. But when things went into reverse, the model was seen as unsustainable. Local authority cuts meant that councils could no longer keep shelling out endless amounts for the old people in their care. This in turn meant that where possible, elderly and frail people were encouraged to stay in their own homes, assisted by carers, which was cheaper. Lack of funds and lack of residents meant that Southern Cross could no longer afford the ever-increasing rents on the properties they had sold to consortia of landlords. Worse, lack of cash meant that many staff were not paid or were paid late and so they walked out or resigned, leaving confused old people without the assistance they should have been receiving.

And so the business model fell down. But care homes should never be subjected to a 'business model' in the first place. Surely anybody with a grain of humanity could see that? The result of this debacle is that the entire care home sector is in free fall. Private equity companies became involved and the whole messy business involved complicated layers of buying, selling and ever-changing ownership that nobody could really understand. All we do know is that some fat cats got very fat indeed before everything started to collapse.

What is wrong with local authorities owning their own care homes, providing their own staff and looking after old people properly? Nobody should ever try to monetise care homes, unless they are private and unashamedly run for profit. The vast majority of Southern Cross residents were paid for by the local authority, meaning that the ultimate payers are us, the taxpayers. We are lining the pockets of the city boys who moved in, seeing a wonderful killing. There should not be such things as shareholders in local authority homes. It is all completely wrong, immoral and despicable.

Now the city boys are trying to say they have the welfare of the elderly, often confused, residents at heart. Yes, they are saying this now that Southern Cross is billions of pounds in debt, share prices have plummeted, and the danger is that the whole edifice will completely collapse leaving 30,000 or more residents stranded. After all, they are only in the care homes anyway because they are beyond home care or are suffering from Alzheimer's and cannot look after themselves, even with daily assistance.

The campaign to save our libraries is gathering force in Oxford -- as one might expect, where there are a lot of readers and writers. Several famous local writers, including Philip Pullman, have enthusiastically joined in the campaign. So why save libraries? In the first place, libraries are welcoming, friendly places where the staff are helpful, knowledgeable and professional. There is hardly any book that they cannot get for you and they will scour everywhere to find it. In the second place, the computers in libraries provide an essential service for those who cannot afford or who don't have, their own home computer. In the third place, they have useful reference sections where you can look up local history, encylopedias, medical and legal directories -- all of which you have to subscribe to if you want to refer to them online. Libraries have many newspapers and magazines, many of which you may not have even heard of until you browse their sections. They are warm, friendly places to revise or research.

Then, in more recent years, they have audio books, DVDs and music you can borrow.

Libraries are civilised and civilising influences, a calm centre of the world's greatest literature and learning and a resource for everybody. You don't have to be rich, or poor or anybody special in order to join and use a library. Libraries are truly democratic places where everybody has equal access to the many services now on offer. Some have gardens, cafes, quiet rooms and children's activities. You can discover everything that is going on in your locality by visiting your local library -- talks, plays, events, concerts, pressure groups, voluntary activities. In fact, the more I think about it, the more useful and essential libraries become.

However could anybody think of cutting or removing this valuable service? If I am feeling tired, lonely or jaded, a trip to my nearest library will guarantee to cheer me up. I can always find three or four books I want to read, even if I may not want to buy them. Indeed, I may not be able to buy them as, unless they are new, they will probably be out of print. And they are expensive on Amazon. Even if the actual book only costs 1p, the postage will be several pounds, and the book could take a few weeks to arrive. Again, DVDs are very expensive to buy and you may only want to watch or listen to them once. If you like a book or DVD, you can always buy it later. The library offers you the opportunity for a taster. If I don't get on with a book I have taken out of the library, I just take it back.

Speaking personally, I have used libraries ever since I could read and wherever I am living, the first thing I will always do is join the local library. I use them extensively for research and love the Dewey Decimal system which enables you to find a book instantly. Browsing among the shelves, you often come across old titles you had completely forgotten about but which you feel intrigued to read again. You can't do this in a bookshop or on Amazon.

There are many so-called services that I would forgo in order to retain libraries, in particular letters I am always getting inviting me to go for medical screening. Whatever must that cost? As an older person, I now qualify for a bus pass but I would willingly forgo that to retain all the libraries we now have. Yes the bus pass is a wonderful concession but quite honestly, it means I tend to use the bus when otherwise I would walk. Again, whatever do these bus passes cost the councils? Then, what must it cost to have so many people on statins -- drugs which are expensive but almost always completely unnecessary.

As an author myself, I am in receipt of PLR - public lending right. It's not much; about 4p or something per book borrowed but for popular authors it adds up to a welcome sum of money in February and in addition, lets you know which of your books are popular -- and they are not always the same titles that sell in the bookshops. A book of mine on Reincarnation was popular for many years after it went out of print and this tells me that the subject is popular. Now, my property titles are in demand among borrowers; most of the earlier ones have probably fallen apart by now and that is why they record O on the PLR statement.

When I go into my local library in Summertown, North Oxford, it is always busy. I am told it has between 400 and 800 people going there a day, so it is hardly underused. The main town centre library is of course always packed, but not everybody can easily get to the main libraries. It's the small branch libraries that are most vital to the quality of local life.

I can hardly believe councils are even THINKING of closing so many of them.

I've been saying it for years and now it seems they're finally listening -- not to me, but to sense. Banks must be broken up into retail and investment areas which are quite separate from each other and never overlap. It can't be right that banks gamble with our money. We deposit our wages and savings into bank accounts because, quite simply, there is nowhere else to put them. In the old days you could get paid in cash or keep your money under the mattress but those days are long over. Everybody has to have some kind of bank account, even people on benefits. It's easy to see why; it's so the government can keep a check on how much money everybody has got and what they do with it, for tax purposes. Most of us don't have enough money or enough nous, to be able to circumvent the tax system.

Given this, there needs to be a radical overhaul of the banking system and not simply because of the financial crisis brought about by reckless gambling and risk-taking among bankers. We need to know that the money we deposit is safe, that a certain level of interest is guaranteed, that our pensions won't melt away and that we won't be charged huge rates if we have to borrow. We need to simplify the high street banking system right down so that it becomes reliable, honest and trustworthy. I would like to see an end to all the misleading ads -- 'helpful banking' 'together' and so on, giving the impression that they are trying to give us money rather than what they are actually doing, which is taking it away.

In common with many other people, I used to be financially comfortable. I had saved prudently for my old age and by downsizing, had accrued enough capital to live on. No longer. Because interest rates came down to 0.5%, what I had thought was a reasonable safety net, completely disappeared. Again in common with many other people, I had worked hard all my life, privately educated two children, never been on the dole or claimed any benefits and, apart from two short stays in a maternity hospital, have never been ill, never taken any medication, never had any operations and in fact, have not cost the NHS or the state education system a single penny. Nor have any of my family ever used the NHS or, come to that, had private treatment either.
I'm not exactly out on the street, but the antics of the banks have meant that I have had to think again about what to do with the money that used to provide an income. It's no good telling me to tie up my money for five years to get 3.5% interest -- way below inflation and if you can't touch it for five years, what good is it? In any case, interest rates will probably go up inside five years and you are still stuck with your five year bond.

What should happen is that the high street banks should revert to being modern versions of building societies, not run for profit but for mutual benefit. They should pay out a reasonable, guaranteed rate of interest to savers and lend to borrowers at a slightly higher rate, to meet running costs. All bank staff would be paid a reasonable wage and managers and overseers would get slightly more, but not 40 times as much as entry level staff. Such banks would not be allowed to sell products which could cause a loss, such as stocks and shares ISAs. When depositing money you would know it was safe, that you were guaranteed the rate of interest advertised when you deposited, and no bonds would be for more than a year for those over 18.

Most people who put money into banks are not financial experts and do not understand what is meant by risk. The small print perhaps explains it but the big print sells the product, and simple, unsophisticated people are taken in.

Those who want to gamble with their money can use the investment banks. On the whole, these will be more financially sophisticated people who understand international financial markets and how they can fluctuate; they are also people who are prepared to take a risk with stocks and shares. Most people, though, are not like that. They just want something they can understand, which pays them a fair rate of interest and which enables them to calculate their income both present and future.

Although money will always be volatile and where large sums are concerned there will always be chancers and rogues, surely we can institute a system which is completely honest, above board, which is not hyped so as to dupe the simple-minded and which can be trusted? Now that so many UK banks are nationalised, or virtually so, surely now is the time to bring in a completely different system? Because so many of us find money matters boring, we have left it to those who don't find it boring and who are always looking for ways to take money off the innocent and trusting. We cannot leave our money, our livelihoods, our financial futures, to the fat cats. They only want the cream for themselves; it never trickles down.

And while we're at it, abolish inheritance tax so that we can leave money to our children and grandchildren without paying ridiculous amounts in yearly premiums to 'shelter' it from the taxman; at present, the only way to avoid our executors paying huge sums in IHT and, in many cases, having to borrow at high rates of interest because there is not enough liquid in a bank account to pay the 40% over £325,000, the current threshold.

VAT goes up to 20% and one thing is certain -- it will never come down again. When VAT was first introduced, it was 8% and has steadily risen to its present rate. Not only that, but VAT has been gradually levied on an ever wider range of goods and services, such as gas and electricity. Another thing is certain and that is that governments will take ever more money off us. It was not the fault of the great British public, or American public, or French public, that we now have such a huge deficit. Although there are many factors, a lot can be blamed on governments allowing banks to get away with what is little more than organised, sanctioned fraud or theft. What can we do? Very little, it seems -- as whichever party is voted in, the same thing happens. University fees were going to rise, whichever party gained power but perhaps we should be asking what all this university education is for? Is it any more than containment of so many young people? University education used to be for a privileged elite and has gradually become available to ever more people -- but nowadays, at huge price. There is no evidence that a degree will increase earnings, unless you qualify as a doctor or lawyer, for instance. Instead of concentrating on university education, we should be making sure children get a good education from the age of five, and can read, write, spell, add up and speak a foreign language.

The world is, apparently, excited and thrilled that Samantha Cameron has had a fourth baby, delivered by Caesarean section at Truro Hospital. It is a girl, weighing just over six pounds (amazing how they revert to old weights at these times)  and David Cameron is on record as saying he is a very proud dad.

Cue gushing from such as Sarah Brown (‘lovely announcement of the new Downing Street baby’) and congratulations from both the powerful and the powerless.  But let’s unpick all this for a moment. Firstly, should a responsible world leader be setting an example by having four children? Isn’t two more than enough in today’s world where there are not going to be enough jobs for everybody and food and other resources are simply not going to meet our fast growing population?

Secondly, what’s so marvellous about having a baby? Any female creature can reproduce, it takes no qualities of character, judgment, personality or education to become pregnant and in fact, sensible women try to avoid it these days.

Thirdly, and most importantly,  I’m worried that all this fake gush and congratulatory messages may encourage daft girls to get pregnant thinking that by so doing they too will be loved, congratulated and admired.  Wasn’t there also a new Clegg baby fairly recently?

In my day, forty-plus was considered old to be having a baby; not now, it seems.  We felt sorry for women approaching and over 40 who had another baby; now they have to be congratulated instead.

No, the person we should be congratulating and admiring is Julia Gillard, the proudly childfree Australian politician. Gillard, daughter of ten-pound Poms, has risen to be Australia’s first female prime minister entirely by her own efforts, intelligence, determination and strength of character – and not by marrying a powerful man or taking up time, money and resources bringing yet another unnecessary person into an already vastly overpopulated world.

Then, technically, a C-section is NOT ‘giving birth’. It is a surgical operation requiring anaesthetic, cutting, stitching and a fairly long recovery period. David Cameron alleged that the baby just ‘popped out’. Of its own accord?  Hardly. So was  it an elective or emergency C-section? We should be told.

Please, let’s have less of the gush and more reality. 

Lynn Barber: An Education. The book of the film of the book; vastly expanded version of Lynn's original memoir. It tells not only how she fell for a conman aged 16 but of her marriage, career and husband's ghastly death. Lynn's story is particularly interesting to me because I am exactly the same age and like her, I came from a very ordinary background, went to university and had an exciting, if nerveracking, career as a journalist and author. But as this book proves, we are all very different creatures, even when we have so much in common. Lynn's parents encouraged her to get an education and go to Oxford; mine didn't. They would have been happy enough for me to leave school at 16 and train as a secretary. They had no idea of higher education or careers. Nor was I picked up by a conman and nor did I remain happily married to the same man all my life. Nor did I go to Oxford. Well, I'm here now but only as an older person. It was considered actually impossible for a girl to get to Oxbridge from my coed grammar school, although some boys got there. Because it was thought a total impossibility, we didn't even try. Just shows how we limited our aspirations and I'm sure this would not have happened at a girls' school. No girl from my home town had ever become a Fleet Street journalist, either. Again, this was way out of our orbit.

But now, Lynn and I are both in our 60s and we can look back, on the good and the bad and what we achieved in spite of everything. As one might expect from a seasoned journalist, this book is an easy, light read even where Lynn deals with her husband's last fatal illness and the possibility that, in spite of the outwardly happy marriage, he probably had affairs. He was in many ways the junior partner, never achieving Lynn's celebrity and I wonder what he would have made of the film? Well, the story turned into a fantastic film and Lynn says it has sold to practically every country in the world, as it deserves to.





Christopher Hitchins: Hitch 22. The memoirs of a highlu intelligent, sensitive but essentially angry man. But God! he can write! In the book he talks about writing having a 'gold standard' and he has that gold standard. The book is full of literary allusions and concise encapsulations of wars. It is perceptive, insightful and amusing. Hitchens' background is interesting, too. He is the son of a military man who was forced to earn a living as a school bursar -- odd, but many ex-military men ended up as scholl bursars: I wonder why? His mother Yvonne tried all her life to suppress her Jewish heritage and be glamorous, successful and noticed. She ended up committing suicide in Greece with her lover and was a follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for whom Hitchens has, as one would expect, very little time. Now Hitch has terminal cancer and that may be making him even angrier but he is certainly a highly talented writer and I liked this one better than his previous work, God is not Great.



EM Forster: Howards End. It was years since I had read this famous novel and because the content is so well known and has passed into folklore, almost, I wondered whether I could come at it afresh. And no, I couldn't, not completely, as the book has been so picked over by critics and commentators over the years, it is almost impossible to know what one thinks of it. However, I will try. FR Leavis thought the novel had too many ridiculous coincidences and unbelievable incidents, such as Mrs Wilcox leaving Margaret Howards End, Margaret marrying the widower Mr Wilcox and Mr Wilcox himself having an affair with Jacky, the much-used older wife of clerk Leonard Bast. To a modern reader, they are hard to take although as we also know, truth is stranger than fiction and more extraordinary coincidences happen in real life than are ever dreamed up in fiction. But as Howards End is also a work of genius, there are insights and apercus which still ring true today, such as the power of money or the lack of it, to affect character and behaviour and the relevance of the famous phrase 'only connect' which, today, would probably be called empathy. Because Leonard Bast is only a low-down clerk, Mr Wilcox not only cannot connect with him, but is not remotely interested. Therefore, he will cheerfully see Bast lose his job and fall into the abyss. Margaret and Helen Shlegel cannot understand this attitude but then, they have always been protected by a private income (as Forster himself was) and have never had to soil their hands or their minds by following a profession or trying to earn a living. There are echoes here of the concerns of other novelists of the time, such as HG Wells and Galsworthy, who also wrote about money. In the days before the welfare state, these concerns became acute but they are less relevant today. Howards End rightly deserves its place as a classic work of fiction and is much more than a period piece, with lively, interesting characters who react strongly with each other. Their differing perspectives form the basis of the novel but it's hard, as Forster admits, to know who is right or what to do for the best. Nobody in this novel is perfect. For modern readers, the magisterial, authorial tone might seem a bit much, the novelist coming down from a great height and pronouncing, but the characters are far more than just mouthpieces of the author but are people the reader can care about.


Sue Gee: the Mysteries of Glass. It is 1860 and Richard Allan, a nervous young curate, arrives in the dead of winter, to a lonely cottage to take up his duties. He means well but from the first does not meet with wholehearted approval. His first sermon does not go down well with everybody, and several people become suspicious of the newcomer. As winter gives way to spring, his life opens out, but with disastrous consequences. He falls passionately in love with the young wife of the vicar although he tries his best to keep it a total secret. The vicar is much older than his wife and becomes very ill, with no hope of recovery. The wife, Susannah, has to suppress the wicked thought that he might die, and then she and Richard, the curate, might be together. But it does not work out like that. Several people suspect the totally unconsummated love affair and eventually Richard is hauled up before the parish council to explain himself. It all looks hopeless, yet from somewhere Richard finds the courage to accuse his accusers. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone .. This is Sue Gee at the height of her powers; she has entered into the mindset of the mid-Victorians, especially as Darwinism is making headway, and Richard finds he has to tread a careful path between popery, Methodism, the wickedness of the evolutionary theory, and also the wickedness of loving another man's wife. He longs to be a married man, to have children but at the end of the novel this looks as far away as ever. However, there is hope for the future. A wonderful novel to read by the fireside on a winter's evening and reflect on how dramatically attitudes have changed since those days.





Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go. A true masterpiece, a novel which starts off quite slowly but before the end of the first page we realise something is not right, something is not as it should be. It's the story of three people who are not really people at all, but manufactured clones who are bred purely for their vital organs. They will die 'donating' these organs to cure or treat other 'real' people. As children, these three friends are at a country boarding school; however, it doesn't take long before we realise this is no ordinary boarding school. For one thing the pupils - known as 'students' - never go home and for another, they never have any parents. As these children grow up, they exhibit very similar emotions to real people. They can feel love, desire, jealousy and anguish but they know from a young age that they will never have jobs or careers, they will never marry or have children and they will die quite young. They all seem to accept their fate in life. In this scientific programme, which is never made entirely clear, some of the clones will become donors at a young age while others are designated as carers, which will enable them to live slightly longer, although they will inevitably become donors in the end.

The novel has some Huxleyish Brave New World touches but is much less didactic and the reader only gradually realises that a nightmare world is being unfolded. The flat, almost childlike and understated style of the writing is deliberate as it is a first-person narrative, told through the eyes of Kathy, one of the clones. Chilling, subtle and gaining force as it proceeds, this is a truly original and disturbing work. Ishiguro, unlike Huxley, does not go into details of how the clones are cloned or even how their vital organs are extracted so that they can live to proceed to a third, or even fourth, donation. Nobody recovers from the fourth donation, after which they are said to have 'completed' - or died. But when they are alive, how far are they actual humans, with as much individuality as anybody else? This is the enigma which interests the author, rather than the scientific means by which these clones are created. Nor do we ever meet those who are responsible for perpetrating these freaks of nature. Much is left unsaid or unexplained -- deliberately, one feels.



Stieg Larsson: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I read this book at one (very long) sitting so it must be a page-turner. Like millions of other readers all over the world, I couldn't put it down but after I had finished it left me feeling slightly queasy. Although brilliantly plotted and very clever, the sex, violence and sadism was just too much. How can one sit down and write that stuff? Some of the descriptions of women reminded me rather of Harold Robbins - not just male fantasy but intended to titillate while masquerading as feminism and a rallying cry against sexual abuse of women. I know that Lisbeth gets her own back later but there was so much casual sex -- everybody fancies the hero, it seems - which was, to my mind, completely unneccessary. I liked the analysis of financial journalism today, and why so few scams and scandals are ever reported (maybe Wikileaks will change all that) and also the way the Millenium magazine struggles to keep going. All those rang very true but the women were male fantasy stereotypes - even the publisher of the magazine, who is married but has a convenient sexual arrangement with the hero. Yes I suppose all men would like to be so fatally attractive to women. But it was certainly hard, no, impossible, to put down while I was actually reading it.


Howard Jacobson: The Finkler Question,

Winner of the 2010 Man Booker prize and as such, gathering many plaudits, this book is about being Jewish, and is the tale of three men who interract at points during the narrative. Everything is subjected to the 'Finkler': what would Finkler, or what would a very intelligent, Jewish man, do under such circumstances? As one might expect from Jacobson, the book is very clever, very funny but somehow, I seem to have read it all before. While the men are different from each other, the women are identical -- or, at least, they speak an identical dialogue - terse, witty, putting down the men in their one-liners. The only real difference is that one of the women, Hephzibah, is curvaceous while the others are skinny. But her speech is identical. Jacobson takes some potshots at the BBC (The BBC Atrocities Museum) and the novel has some in-depth analysis of the Israel/Palestine situation, especially through the meetings of the ASHamed Jews at the Groucho Club. Enjoyable, dark and funny at the same time -- although I must say that while I appreciated the humour, I read it with a completely straight face and did not laugh once - I seem to have heard all the jokes and read most of the dialogue, before. A distinct feeling of deja vu. It's very much a man's novel, and the Finkler book titles- Dating with Descartes, and suchlike, are so much in the male comic novel tradition, that I did not really feel I was getting anything new out of it. But have to admire Jacobson's cleverness and hold on plot and situation.

John Mole: I was a Potato Oligarch: Travels and travails in the new Russia.  An account of funny foreigners in the Peter Mayle, Bill Bryson tradition. In my view, Mole is funnier than either, but that might be because he has more painfully entertaining material, and Russians make better comic copy than either the French or the English. Mole relates how he tried to set up a jacket potato franchise in a Russia just emerging from communism into a free market.  He is a genuinely funny writer with a sure ear and eye for dialogue and character, and this tale of an innocent abroad in a country just starting to struggle with an enterprise culture, keeps up its entertaining momentum throughout the book.   Mole is a clever writer who deserves to be better known.

Claire Tomalin: Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man. superlative biography, highly professional, sheds a lot of new light on the author of Tess and Jude, etc. Hardy was a fabulously successful author in his lifetime, able to create unforgettable characters who have now woven themselves into the fabric of literature so that in many ways, like Dickens’ characters, they seem to be real people.  Hardy was less successful in his relationships with women and his long childless marriage to the boring Emma – who herself had aspirations to be a writer – is well described.  One feels for Emma, the ‘tragic literary spouse’ as she had nothing whatever to do apart from go on holidays with her increasingly rich and famous husband.  Yet, thanks to him, she has her footnote in history. Tomalin has read and uncovered absolutely everything about Hardy, yet the biography is easy to read and zips along. Tomalin is an excellent writer as well as an industrious researcher and perceptive commentator, and  after reading this biography, you will come to Hardy with new insights and understanding.

Colin Dexter: The Secret of Annexe 3: An Inspector Morse Mystery. Dexter is just so clever, you almost can’t see how he’s done it.  For me, the Morse books have an added thrill now that I’m living in North Oxford, where so many of the stories are set. The Morse books are thoroughly satisfying mysteries with sly little observations thrown in and as an added bonus for me, no explicit violence.  There is also much more sex, both overt and hinted at, than one might expect.

Pattie Boyd with Penny Junor: Wonderful Today The autobiography.   Pattie Boyd was married firstly to Beatle George Harrison and then to Eric Clapton and inspired the enduring songs Layla and Wonderful Tonight.  So she must be something special, right? Pattie, the eldest of six children, was born in Kenya and left school with only three O levels but a stunning face and figure. She soon became a top model and it’s perhaps hard for people today to remember just how famous Pattie was and how many magazine covers she adorned. As she tells it, though, it’s simply no fun being married to a world-famous rock star and I’m sure she’s right. There is fame, even if at second hand, and money of course but these are a high price to pay for the neglect, infidelities, temper, drugs, alcoholic binges and sheer narcissism that go with such a marriage.

This book is a quick, easy read, a valuable addition to rock memoirs for its inside information on that world and although I’m sure the highly professional Penny Junor has extricated all the drama and pathos possible, the general impression is of an airhead, arm candy, the ultimate rock chick.  Pattie was – and remains – phenomenally attractive-looking but her main claim to fame is as an adornment, rather than an analytical commentator on the rock scene.  For a more perceptive appraisal of The Beatles, read Philip Norman’s books.

Andrea Chapin and Sally Wofford-Girand, ed: The Honeymoon’s Over. A collection of personal essays on marriage and divorce by some of America’s leading women writers. In almost every case, these intelligent, educated, articulate and talented women married completely the wrong man and the result was divorce, usually after two or three children had been born.  But why did they marry these men in the first place? Some wanted to be married, to be a bride, some wanted children, some got sucked into relationships and felt they could not get out, some felt sorry for the men, others felt proud to be chosen.  This book takes an honest, disturbing look at modern relationships and makes you realise why religious and fundamentalist men don’t want their women to be educated: if they can’t read or write, have no money or job, marry at 14 and have dozens of children, they are less  likely to complain or write about the deficiencies of the men in their lives. 

Ray Monk: Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness. An impressive, tremendously detailed biography of the man who was a household name in my childhood. I remember sitting down with Russell, then aged about 90, outside the Ministry of Defence on a famous ban-the-bomb march. In his old age, Russell became the darling of the young intelligentsia for his outspoken and iconoclastic views on marriage, morality, education and religion.  His book Why I am Not a Christian seemed dangerously subversive at the time. However, this biography depicts a man who, while blessed with more than his fair share of intellectual intelligence, hardly possessed any emotional intelligence at all. He made four daft marriages; or, at least, three daft marriages and one old-age marriage which seemed to work.  His eldest son John spent much of his life in psychiatric institutions, his granddaughter Lucy committed suicide by setting herself alight at the age of 26 and after his divorces, Russell coldly shunned his three ex-wives. 

Russell lived almost entirely in his head and was somebody who, really, should never have married or had children, but lived a bachelor life in an Oxbridge college. He seemed to be peculiarly disastrous at relationships, and inflicted much misery on his supposed nearest and dearest.

Harold Evans: My Paper Chase This is a big book but somehow I had read it all before or at least,  the content seemed highly familiar: the train-driver father, the working-class background, the start in provincial journalism, the rise to editor of The Sunday Times in its heyday and the many campaigns the paper instigated, (cue retelling for the 1000th time, of the thalidomide story) and the love affair with Tina Brown, as he pursued her on his motorbike.   Hasn’t it all been written about before in his Good Times, Bad Times?  Not so enjoyable or jolly as the Hugh Cudlipp books, Publish and Be Damned and Walking on the Water.  Harry Evans and Hugh Cudlipp are possibly the most famous newspaper editors of all time and have both passed into legend although Evans is still alive. They were both lucky enough to be at the helm in the glory days of newspapers.   

Lisa St Aubin de Teran: Memory Maps. This book, by a professional exotic, revisits her by now all too familiar territory – the hacienda in South America, the derelict palace in Umbria, the three marriages, the children, the writing, the almost-made films, the illnesses, the worldwide wanderings.  Not quite sure who might be interested. It seems that the author has almost total, detailed recall of events from her earliest childhood and I wondered where memoir strayed into fiction. For me, there were just too many locations in the book, from Russia to Luxemburg to Venice to Venezuela to Nevis to Wimbledon, Norfolk and Clapham South – I found myself losing track and not really caring.  Also, the tone is of somebody mighty pleased with themselves.

William Boyd: Any Human Heart.  William Boyd is one of our most accomplished, assured, versatile and reliable novelists. When we open a William Boyd book, we know we are in for a good, reasonably easy read. This book is written in the form of a diary, starting in the 1920s and ending in the 1980s. It is the story of Logan Mountstuart, educated at public school and Oxford and who enjoys early success as a writer both of fiction and non-fiction. The action of the novel moves between France, New York, Africa and London and takes in many real people, such as Ian Fleming, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Ernest Hemingway and Evelyn Waugh. Mountstuart has an active and adventurous life with many triumphs and disasters and this includes a considerable amount of  sexual adventures.  For me, the main interest of the book was in how a man sees women, sexually and otherwise, and in the attempts made to depict the women as real, rounded characters rather than just there for sexual gratification or male fantasy.  It has clearly been written to appeal to women as much as men.

The book is written in a plain style which I appreciate, without any purple patches or self-conscious ‘writerly’ touches – and is all the better for that. Perhaps it is ever so slightly painting by numbers in parts, but it never descends into cliche and there are some surprising twists and turns.  Mountstuart’s old age and end is not what one would expect. Along the way there are a few ‘in’ touches about writers, agents, publishers, royalties and sales which I, as a writer myself, enjoyed. But for other readers, they would hardly intrude.

Sebastian Faulks: A Week in December. Hugely enjoyable, very accomplished novel about the  banking crisis, and an accurate analysis (as it seems) of the banker and hedge fund manager mindset. Faulks has taken pains to understand and explain highly complicated financial vehicles which even most bankers can’t understand, so here is evidence of a fine, creative mind at work. There is a lot of humour, a rich cast of characters and although some of the plot devices may be slightly clunky – well, you can’t have everything and anybody who wants to understand how the banking crisis happened should read this book, rather than a dry account by a non-writer.  It slightly echoes Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities except that this one is about real events. 

NB: there was a negative review of this book in the Guardian Review Section, Sat Sept 4, 2010, but I found the book witty, intelligent and informative, tackling some difficult subjects for a novelist.

Alison Weir: Katherine Swynford. Very detailed, scholarly biography of the mistress, later wife, of  John of Gaunt and as such, an interesting and important historical figure. Weir has dug up an astonishing amount of detail and the book is very readable by the layperson but maybe there is a bit too much research for the ordinary reader to take in. I must say that on balance I prefer the Anya Seton historical novel about the same person even though it is, as Weir points out, very much of its time and evokes the moral code of the 1950s rather than that of the 14th century.  When I first read Katherine by Anya Seton, I simply couldn’t put it down. This one though, I could.

Jack Higgins: Midnight Runner. Amazingly, this was the first Jack Higgins I had ever read and now I know why.  It’s very clever, very slick, incredibly fast-paced but extremely violent – far too violent for me. It was, I must say, completely unputdownable, being written in short paragraphs with lots of dialogue but the characters were too nasty and there were too many cold-blooded killers who despatch people with no ceremony, no feeling and no remorse, for the thriller to have any real appeal. I’m sure Higgins has thoroughly done his research but in the end I wondered what I was doing reading about all these horrible people.

Sara Maitland: A Book of Silence.  Chatty, intimate,  intelligent and clever, richly woven, totally honest, literary, literate, a joy to read. Cannot praise it highly enough. The book takes the reader into another world; that of living alone and, for most of the time, in silence. It is not maybe an experience that all would wish to undergo but as all the great spiritual traditions understand, it is important to be able to go into silence to understand oneself, one’s motives, strengths and weaknesses.  An unusual experience distilled into a masterpiece of a book. 

Sophie Hannah: the other half lives. A highly involved, intricate thriller, extremely well researched and with many twists and turns, but in places very violent indeed.  Contemporary, with all the up to date references – google, Amazon, etc -  Hannah keeps all, or most of the balls in the air until the final denouement but I, at least, could see it coming from some way off. Some of the violent scenes made me feel queasy and one wondered what these people had done to deserve this kind of ill-treatment?  Plus, it was slightly too intricate for my taste – I kept forgetting who all the people were and how they connected with each other.  They should have had more memorable names, as in Dickens. 

John Sergeant: Give Me Ten Seconds. The autobiography of the former television political correspondent and now, all-round entertainer. Sergeant is a quick-witted, clever man, a natural performer, engaging personality and entertainer but not, on this evidence at least, a natural writer. A salutary reminder that real writing takes endless hard slog and effort and – mainly, daily practice. You can’t just come at it once in a while.  However, there are some interesting insights into politics of the 1980s and 90s.

Have we forgotten about feminism? Or do we imagine the fight is long over? Certainly there have been many gains for women in the past 40 years or so. We have access to effective contraception, equal education and we have long been able to secure our own mortgages and bank loans and set up our own businesses. In fact, in the secular world, the gains have been spectacular.

But in the religious world, women are still seen as secondary. I can’t believe the fight that is going on to ‘allow’ women to be bishops, especially now that most (as it seems to me) urban and rural vicars are now female.  What difference does the gender make? After all, bishops dress up in female clothes and always have done. To my knowledge, there is not yet a female Catholic priest, although there are now female rabbis. Nor do Muslims have female clerics – again, so far as I am aware.

It has always been religion which has held women back and it was not until mass secularisation, after the second world war, that women began to make significant gains to control their own lives and their own fertility. Until then it was seen as the natural order of things that women were inferior to men and this was reflected in society at large.

I’m sure it is the lingering effect of religion which is, to this day, preventing women from achieving full equality.  For instance, it is STILL common for a woman to take a man’s name on marriage, but how often does a man take a woman’s name? A woman still becomes ‘Mrs’ on marriage, yet a man’s title does not change. The wife of a Lord automatically becomes a Lady, yet the husband of a Dame does not become a Lord. We still have the situation where to be the wife of a leading politician is seen as a job in its own right, even though these women are unelected and as such, can play no active part in government. 

Sarah Brown has a popular twitter promoting her husband, but does he have a twitter promoting her?

After a prolonged lull, it seems that feminism now has a new face, new champions and let’s hope they will manage to achieve what we in the 1970s did not quite achieve – full and total equality for men and women and no underlining of secondary status by changing names or titles when forming a partnership with a man.  And no reflected glory or proxy status, either.

I want to get a forum going about health in old age. First of all, I wonder whether I'm unusual in that, at 66, I seem to be completely healthy and take no pills or medication at all, not even vitamins or minerals.
I never go to the doctor - haven't been for about 20 years - and I refuse all the check-ups that are offered by the NHS. My own health regime is simple and works for me. For over 30 years now I have been vegetarian and although I've been told that I may be deficient in protein, I'm not quite sure how such a deficiency would manifest itself. Certainly there don't seem to be any obvious deficiencies: I don't suffer from undue tiredness and have plenty of energy for my daily tasks, which include several tough workouts at the gym every week. I am convinced that there are three elements responsible for my good health: no medication, regular workouts and a vegetarian diet. Plus of course I pay strict attention to my weight, in the belief that overweight is the biggest health destroyer of all.
Now although genes and hereditary obviously play a part, there have been a number of early deaths in my family, so I shouldn't be too complacent, but at the moment I have no symptoms of any age-related condition. The question I'm asking is: am I unusual, or are most women of my age in the same healthy condition as myself?
And men too, come to that. Although very many women of my age seem to be perfectly healthy with abundant energy levels, this is not the case with most of the men I know. Just about all of them are on pills of one kind or another; beta-blockers, warfarin and statins seem to be the most widely prescribed, bur large numbers are also on NSAIDs for arthritis.
Talking to a doctor friend recently, she said that all doctors' surgeries and all hospitals have a small number of very high users, rather than the other way round.
So, in order to get a dialogue and discussion going, I would be interested to hear what others in this age group have to say about their state of health - and if they are in good health, what is their secret?
The main reason I'm asking is that older age is traditionally associated with severe health decline. But is this now out of date as we baby boomers head towards our own old age?

My inbox – don’t know about anybody else’s – is currently littered with ads to buy distressed properties, currently on offer all over the world: Bahamas, France, Italy, Greece,Spain, US, Bulgaria, UK.

The prices sound tempting enough. Many Florida properties are on sale for what seem like very small five-figure sums, such as $45,000. They are often described as rent-ready and in immaculate condition.

But am I tempted, and should you be? No! Why would you want a ‘distressed’ property and why is it distressed anyway?  The term does not refer to the condition of the property, but the fact that it has been repossessed or foreclosed by the bank. Very often, these sales are released back onto the market by the banks who are trying to offload them at any cost.

They may then be sold cheap to a finance or property company which in turn, is advertising them at suspiciously low rates. 

Although they may seem cheap to buy, these properties are not necessarily cheap to run.  In fact, the purchase costs are only the start. Many properties are foreclosed because the owners could not afford to pay the running costs on them. Distressed properties in holiday areas usually come with very high maintenance costs, such as garden  landscaping, caretaking, pool maintenance, fees to the management company and local taxes.

Very often, annual maintenance charges are very low on new developments and then they rise significantly after a year or so; the low charges are just to entice you in.

And even if you are able to rent them out, you will probably only recoup about half the rental; you will probably not even cover your costs on the properties.

Very often, distressed properties are only offered for sale when the banks have not been able to sell them, or when none of the bank staff want them for themselves. This has certainly happened with Spanish properties, and is very probably the case with properties in other countries as well.

If, however, you are interested in buying a distressed property, possibly as a holiday home, these are the figures you need to bear in mind: interest charges on any foreign mortgage; currency fluctuations; annual maintenance charges; local taxes; fees to letting agents, cleaning companies, gardeners, pool servicing and any other handling fees.

If considering the property as a rental investment, find out (a) how many weeks, realistically, the property will rent out during the year and (b) what rent you can hope to  achieve, especially if there is fierce competition from other holiday rental properties in the same area. 

As ever more people default on their holiday homes or even their main home, there will increasingly be more of these ads. A few years ago, everybody was rushing to buy property abroad and in some cases, their purchase turned out to be a good investment or, it enhanced the quality of their life.

But the last few years have seen many hastily-built holiday complexes all over the world and a lot of these are now standing empty.

If you have some spare cash or are considering downsizing, is now a good time to invest in property?

Fears about capital gains and VAT rises, plus the continuing uncertainty of the property market, has understandably made people very jittery about risking large sums of money on bricks and mortar investments, both in the UK and abroad.

At the same time, the internet is littered with apparently wonderful bargains: Buy a Caribbean hideaway for just £1 down; come to our free distressed property seminar; make a guaranteed 20% profit every year, are examples of the kind of offers and promises you now see.

My advice is: take no notice of any of them and do your own research. Never, ever rely on an internet ad to lead you to a fantastic bargain. The point about investing in property at this moment is that it can give you a reasonable, although not spectacular return which is probably better than anything you can get at the bank.

But investing in property is not without risk and it is by no means hassle-free. At present, the only way to make money from property is by renting it out. You cannot hope for capital gain; or, at least, you cannot rely on it. As such, you need to concentrate entirely on the achievable yield – what you can get now, not at some indefinite time in the future.

And before buying anything at all, you have to number-crunch very carefully indeed, taking into account all the worst possible figures. HIPS have disappeared, thank goodness, but there are still many costs involved in buying and running an investment property (or any property come to that). These may include: survey,  mortgage costs,legal costs, utilities, furnishings, maintenance and repair, insurance, service charges (if a flat or apartment); council tax, letting agents’ fees, phone calls and transport to visit the property, cleaning, gardening – it goes on and on and never stops.

There are endless certificates now needed for rental properties, and these all cost. Gas certificates, for instance, have to be renewed yearly. Deposits have to be ‘protected’.  All properties need an Energy Performance Certificate, and letting agents will not now handle homes without one.

At the same time as certificates and legal requirements proliferate, rents have not gone up significantly for at least 10 years. Then all tenants imagine they can bargain and negotiate; they know that there are a lot of properties out there and many landlords competing for tenants.

And what  if your wonderful property simply won’t rent out?  There are never any guarantees. If it stands empty, you will be stung for full council tax as well as having to pay for all utilities in the meantime. Plus your mortgage, if you have one.

Then you have to ask yourself whether you can actually handle being a landlord. The landlord/tenant relationship can be a difficult and delicate one, and you really do need considerable people skills, and a pleasant personality, to make it work. You have to consider how you would react if your tenant stops paying rent, trashes the place, brings in a dog when pets are expressly forbidden, or plays loud music which annoys the neighbours.

Yes, there are many downsides but there are upsides as well. If you get it right, and the numbers work out to give you a profit over and above your costs, you will be providing a much-needed service, and making your money work harder than if you just donate it to usurious banks. I have been a landlord for over 15 years and am currently renting out four properties; two in Worthing, one in Oxford and one in London. The properties are all immaculate, and the tenants are very happy there.

I usually try to meet them at the start of the tenancy, I provide them with a detailed inventory, a file full of instructions for the cooker, dishwasher, boiler and so on, and once I’m assured they are OK in the property and know how everything works, I leave them severely alone.

The best tip I can offer for anybody considering investing in rental property right now is to visit several estate agents’ offices in the area you have earmarked, and ask what is popular, what is hanging around, and what the average rents are. Do this BEFORE going to view any properties.

And – of course you can get my book, the fifth edition of The Complete Guide to Investing in Property, for the full picture.