Book Review: ‘Monster’ by Alan Hall

I still remember the first time news broke about an Austrian man who kept his own daughter captive in an underground dungeon for 24 years, never letting her out, constantly raping her and eventually fathering seven incestuous children with her. It was a story so sickening, so unimaginable that even the most morally depraved horror
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The Haunting in Connecticut – Fact or Fiction?

Yesterday I watched the ‘based on the true story’ film The Haunting in Connecticut. First, a short review To be honest, despite the poor reviews the film was received, it wasn’t all that bad. It was just average, and for a supernatural horror film, ‘average’ is pretty good these days. In my opinion, it was one
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Favourite passages from Anne Lamott’s ‘Bird by Bird’

One of my favourite memories from the UK was reading Anne Lamott’s classic writing memoir, Bird by Bird, on a lazy afternoon in 2009 in the Borders bookstore in Cambridge. It was one of those books that writing courses love to use and extract from at every opportunity because it’s simple, instructional, insightful and poignant —
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The Beijing Diaries, Day 9 (Part II): The Great Wall!

November 14 The Great Wall With my schedule almost free for the afternoon, my plan was to visit the Great Wall of China. I had actually booked a car (for 600 yuan, including tolls) to pick me up from my hotel and drive me to the Great Wall and back, but the problem was that
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