Books

Jason - I Killed Adolf Hitler

29 Nov 2007

IDIOSYNCRATIC SCI-FI I Killed Adolf Hitler (Fantagraphics) Having re-imagined heavyweight modernist writing icons Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound as criminals involved in a heist in The Left Bank Gang, and plundered George Romeo’s zombie…

Charles M Schulz - Small world

15 Nov 2007

It’s the little things that make the difference. In the case of the Charles M Schulz cartoon strips, that could mean the smallest of pen strokes for a raised eyebrow, an extra crease on a forehead, the downward bend on the ends of a mouth. Schulz…

Beano Annual 2007

(DC Thompson)

11 Dec 2006

COMIC ANNUAL It’s pretty much business as usual in Beano-land, you’ll be glad to hear: we open at the ‘Softies Fashion and Fabric Show’ where Walter and a couple of equally flamboyant chums vie for the lead in The Naked Civil Servant. Inside…

No Mean City: A Story of the Glasgow Slums - Alexander McArthur and H. Kingsley Long (1935)

1 Jan 2005

This cutting edge portrait of working-class life in the worst laid scheme in Scotland sticks out like a sore face. Rarely referred to by its subtitle or complimented for its subtlety, when it was first published Glasgow libraries refused to stock it…

Loung Ung

Edinburgh International Book Festival

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh International Book Festival Surviving the peace Author, campaigner and victim of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, bestselling writer Loung Ung talks to Allan Radcliffe about how she managed to carry on after the hell of the killing fields

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - interview with Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy

14 Feb 2008

Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has spawned countless adaptations since its publication in 1885. The stage play ran for 20 years and there have been numerous film versions, with stars as diverse as Fredric March, Spencer Tracy and…

Horrid Henry Day

27 Mar 2008

The naughtiest boy in children’s fiction has his very own day – 1 April, but Borders is getting in early to capture the weekend crowd. Help celebrate the tomfoolery of Francesca Simon’s most famous character at this fun session of Horrid Henry stories…

Harry Hill

Horsing around

28 Sep 2006

Ricky Gervais, Charlie Higson, Nigel Planer: many a British comedian has deviated into the world of children’s literature. Yet none of them seemed quite so born to it as Harry Hill. The question wasn’t so much if the man who created the ‘Badger Parade…

The Beano

27 Nov 2008

As a wee nipper there wasn’t a more exciting day of the week than ‘Beano day’, when your local newsagent would drop a copy of the cartoon compendium onto your doormat alongside your parent’s newspaper. Often rapidly devoured before heading to school…

Slam

Nick Hornby

20 Sep 2007

Sam is 15. He skates, chases girls and narrates his own coming-of-age novel. Things are going well until he gets one of those girls pregnant and is introduced to the world of adult responsibility. Plus, his father figure is a poster of pro-skater Tony…

The Trick is to Keep Breathing - Janice Galloway (1989)

1 Jan 2005

Janice Galloway’s debut novel made a considerable impact upon its publication. Winner of the MIND Book of the Year/Allen Lane Award, American Academy EM Forster Award plus a SAC book award, the novel was also shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel…

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

27 Nov 2008

Prepare for some bleary eyed school kids on the morning of 4 December, as they recover from a rather special shopping trip the night before. At 12.01am the previous night, the book which helped Harry, Ron and Hermione defeat Lord Voldemort will finally…

Mark Everett interview

Family plot

31 Jan 2008

When Mark Oliver Everett was nine years old and home alone, a plane crashed in his neighbourhood. Stumbling outside, he wandered through the carnage of burning wreckage and body parts before returning to his house. ‘Just another day in my weird life,…

Batman Black & White Volume 3

(DC/Titan)

9 Aug 2007

Usually at home as a simple back-up slot in the monthly Batman: Gotham Knights, Batman Black & White has taken on a life of its own and has quickly become a jewel in the crown of DC’s myriad caped crusader titles. A creative playground for various…

Various, The Book of Boy Trouble - comic review

Various artists

9 Jan 2007

GAY Edited by two of its contributors, Robert Kirby and David Kelly, The Book of Boy Trouble brings together selected highlights of the first ten years of the alternative fanzine of the same title (minus the ‘book’ bit). It’s a collection whose…

Charlie Owen - Bravo Jubilee

27 Nov 2008

SOCIAL DRAMA Copper-turned-crime writer Charlie Owen’s third novel is another retro-fitted 1970s police procedural set in a grim Manchester overspill named Handstead aka Horse’s Arse. Picking up the year after the previous book, Foxtrot Oscar, this…

Chris Addison - It Wasn’t Me

13 Nov 2008

One grotesquely amusing aspect of the current economic crisis has been the sight of our beloved PM desperately trying to hammer home the notion that the predicament should be blamed on ‘global’ factors and is absolutely nothing to do with him, mate. You…

Scottish crime writing

1 Nov 2007

‘Ah, well. If you’re Scottish, and you’re writing crime fiction, at some point someone is going to hail you as “the new Ian Rankin” until they remember, no, actually Ian Rankin is still there. Alex Gray has been described as the Glaswegian Ian Rankin.

Helen Mirren - In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures

Memoir

4 Oct 2007

‘I have a blissfully forgetful brain,’ Helen Mirren informs us in the opening paragraph of her autobiography, which hardly bodes well for a book which demands total recall. But Mirren has dredged the past up from somewhere, or someone, because In the…

American Literature

Born fighting

24 Apr 2007

At the exact moment Chuck Palahniuk greets me with a hushed ‘Hello?’ his home in south-western Washington State is being invaded by a group of unfamiliar men who are chanting in unison at the author: ‘His name is Robert Paulson!’

Ghost Rider

As the new movie roars onto the big screen,

26 Feb 2007

COMICS IIt’s 1972. Evel Knievel was the most famous man in America; films like Blacula, Deep Throat and Deliverance were topping the box-office; events like Watergate and Vietnam meant there was a darker edge in the air. Marvel were running stories…

Preview of the year 2007

2007 is about the future. And about the past. It’

3 Jan 2007

THE FUTURE Cyberspace invaders We may not be flying around in hover cars or wearing spangly all-silver outfits, but thanks to the internet the future has truly arrived. And the revolution will continue apace in 2007, argues Suzanne Black. A…

A Sense of Freedom - Jimmy Boyle (1977)

1 Jan 2005

This is one of the most important books ever published about crime and punishment in Britain. A Sense of Freedom is the autobiographical account of how a boy from the Gorbals grew up in the gang culture of the 60s to become 'Scotland's Most Violent…

New venue brings downtown New York to Edinburgh

19 Nov 2008

Edinburgh’s art scene has another new addition. The Bowery on Roxburgh Place in the Southside, opened last Saturday and takes its name from one of the famous city's hippest streets. The venue aims to replicate the quirky and semi mod attitude of the…

Ali Smith - The First Person and Other Stories

2 Oct 2008

SHORT STORIES In this, her fourth collection of short stories, Ali Smith sets out her philosophical stall as quickly as she can. Her opening tale, ‘True Short Story’, ponders the very nature of the form itself as two men debate the merits of the…

Festival Books - Mark Watson

Eco-friendly, my dear Watson

21 Aug 2008

According to Mark Watson, saving the planet would, at the very least, ‘look pretty smart on all our CVs’. With an already sterling comedy résumé, Watson takes on environmentalism in his latest book, Crap at the Environment, which through the author’s…

Bill Drummond - 17

7 Aug 2008

MUSIC ANALYSIS (Beautiful Books) When Bill Drummond started a choir called The 17, the audience became its members, performing his text-based scores, then having the result played back to them once before being deleted forever. Screw documentation…

Lucy Hawking

19 Jul 2007

What do you do when your father is one of the world’s most respected theoretical physicists, author of the bestseller A Brief History of Time and you want to be a writer? The answer was obvious to Lucy Hawking, daughter of Stephen: write a book…

Also Published - 5 Auto-Biographies

27 Nov 2008

Ted Turner - Call Me Ted The media mogul and ex-husband of Jane Fonda talks about family tragedy, CNN, the America’s Cup and his controversial former missus. Sphere . Diahann Carroll - The Legs are the Last to Go Subtitled ‘Ageing, Acting…

Dag Solstad - Novel 11, Book 18

30 Oct 2008

The only three-time winner of the Norwegian Literary Critics Award, Dag Solstad follows up 2006's much praised Shyness and Dignity with this sophisticated, sometimes claustrophobic, representation of a mid-life crisis coming to an extreme end. The plot…

Arnaldur Indridason - Arctic Chill

4 Sep 2008

Crime fiction is routinely disregarded by literary types, but at its best it can provide the kind of sharp commentary on society that a million Oxbridge dinner party novels could only dream of. Arnaldur Indridason's Icelandic crime procedurals are…

Broons 1939 Annual, The

The Broons 1939 Annual

11 Dec 2006

COMIC ANNUAL Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without a Broons Annual under the tree and this reproduction of the very first annual from 1939 finds Dundee’s favourite family getting caught in the same situations they have been re-living over and…

Pat Mills & Various - Punisher: Eternal War

27 Nov 2008

CRIME During the 80s the Punisher was one of Marvel’s biggest stars, with multiple tiles and a 1989 movie (starring Dolph Lundgren). In Eternal War we get more tales from the archives as The Punisher hits his stride in terms of popularity. The main…

Pat Mills

16 Oct 2008

If you have even a passing interest in British comics, chances are you’ll have read some work by Pat Mills. Despite his legendary status inventing characters like Slaine the Barbarian, Nemesis the Warlock and ABC Warriors, he actually started out…

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain

4 Sep 2008

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain (Granta) Balti Britain is a comprehensive and startling exploration into how Britain and India have shaped each other's fates. Ziauddin Sardar, an academic and cultural commentator, admits to his own ignorance of…

Barrie Appleby

edfest.tv - video

1 Sep 2008

Barrie Appleby's comic illustrations have been enjoyed by generations of children. Meet the artist behind Dennis the Menace and Roger the Dodger and watch as your favourite characters come to life!

Kei Miller

Jamaican voice aching to be heard

21 Aug 2008

In a famous sketch by Bill Hicks, the great comedian is stumped by the question, ‘What are you reading for?’ The enquiry – and its correlative, ‘What are you writing for?’ – are deceptively simple. For Kei Miller, the Jamaican-born poet, novelist and…

The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

13 Mar 2008

If there is still such a thing as ‘appointment television’ in this multi-channel age, The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is it. The adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s much- loved novel arrives on the small screen this fortnight thanks to a wealth of…

Bernhard Schlink - Homecoming

Weidenfeld & Nicolson

31 Jan 2008

A scrap of pulp fiction marks the beginning of a life-long journey for Peter Debauer in this personal account of a fatherless boy in postwar Germany. The fiction, which describes a soldier’s return, has mysterious parallels with Debauer’s own life and…

René Weis

Shakespeare Revealed: A Biography (John Murray)

12 Mar 2007

LITERARY ANALYSIS Combining taut prose with tight scholarship, René Weis has written a gripping biography of the world’s most famous Bard. With the great man’s life notoriously wreathed in mystery, Weis has plunged into the works for clues. He cites…

Ballads of the Book

WORDS & MUSIC

27 Feb 2007

Projects like Ballads of the Book don’t come along very often. And, looking at the roll call of writers and musicians involved, it is easy to see why. It must have been a logistical nightmare getting 54 of Scotland’s finest writers and musicians…

Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon - The Punisher: Welcome Back Frank

27 Nov 2008

CRIME There couldn’t be a better marriage of writer and character than Irish bad boy Garth Ennis and lone vigilante Frank Castle, teaming up with regular artistic partner Steve Dillon for an often irreverent but always brutal and bloody reboot. This…

Various - The Essential Punisher Volume 1

27 Nov 2008

CRIME With The Punisher: War Zone being released on the big screen in early 2009 now is the perfect time to look back on one of comics darkest heroes. Frank Castle has no superpowers, just sheer grit, a high pain threshold, a formidable arsenal and…

Judge Dredd star Big Tam McNutter gets his own T-shirt

19 Nov 2008

A character from Judge Dredd has earned himself the right to be emblazoned across your chest on a T-shirt. Big Tam McNutter, who made an unforgettable appearance in the 1992 2000 AD Yearbook, is the creation of Scottish 2000 AD legends John Wagner and…

Last word: Mark Gatiss

13 Nov 2008

Actor, screenwriter and novelist Mark Gatiss is best known for his role in The League of Gentlemen and acting in Doctor Who. Here he talks trousers, baked beans and sheds.

Gillian Slovo - Black Orchids

13 Nov 2008

Evelyn wishes to be ‘rescued from the boredom of her life’ and it’s in Emil, the beneficiary of a rich Ceylon family, that she finds her non-white knight in shining armour. What seems like an exotic fairy tale in 40s Ceylon, however, is an altogether…

Chris Priestley - Tales of Terror from the Black Ship

16 Oct 2008

GHOST STORIES The great English chiller writer MR James observed that one of the key facets of a good, nerve-shredding ghost story is ‘a pleasing terror’. Chris Priestley’s follow-up to the imaginative Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror similarly aims…

The Lost World Read 2009 to celebrate Darwin and Conan Doyle

16 Oct 2008

Edinburgh, Glasgow and Bristol will join forces as part of a reading campaign in February next year. The Lost World Read 2009 will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Conan Doyle, and the bicentenary of the birth of Charles…

Also Published - 5 Celebrity Memoirs

18 Sep 2008

Roger Moore - My Word is My Bond Seems like it’s 007 memoir season as Alan Partridge’s favourite Bond suavely knocks out his story, an all-true tale of a childhood in WW2 London and hanging out with the stars in Tinseltown. Michael O’Mara . Julie…

Sean Connery & Murray Grigor - Being a Scot

4 Sep 2008

Many Scots cynics, upon seeing the title of this new coffee table volume by our most famous actor, might be inspired to enquire just how much research on the subject can be done by an ex-pat who hasn't lived in the country for decades. It's an…