britain Archives - Andrew Blackman

Reading

The Pleasures of Exile by George Lamming

I loved George Lamming’s novel In the Castle of my Skin, but wasn’t so impressed by this collection of essays. There were some wonderful ideas in here, but the book as a whole felt disjointed. First of all, for those…

Reading

“Race and Racism in Britain” by John Solomos

I’m sure that for sociology students, this book is a very valuable text. It’s very methodical and thorough – it looks at its subject from every angle, and almost every paragraph contains at least one reference to a book in…

Reading

“Fire Horses” by Mark Liam Piggott

Joe Noone seems to have it all – a beautiful house built into a Mallorca hillside, a comfortable lifestyle, a beautiful girlfriend. Yet it’s New Year’s Eve 2007 and as fireworks go off around him and people celebrate, he seems…

Thinking

Payback

Many people in Britain have been wondering for the last few years exactly what we get out of the “special relationship” with the United States. We go along with Afghanistan, we go along with Iraq, we go along with anything.…