Book review: The Impossible Has Happened by Lance Parkin

Chris Hallam's World View

The Impossible Has Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek. Author: Lance Parkin. Aurum Press. Published: July 21st 2016.

It has been fifty years since the creation of Star Trek and the franchise is undeniably going strong. A new film and a new TV series are both scheduled to appear later this year.

Twenty five years after his death, the reputation of the series creator Gene Roddenberry is more uncertain. On the one hand, he has been subject to a personality cult almost as elaborate as that surrounding Scientology creator and sci-fi author. On the other hand, he has been demonised as a fraud, a philanderer and a phoney. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between.

He was born in 1921 and served with distinction as a pilot in the Second World War. After the war, ironically he came very close to death in…

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Book review: The Eye of the Storm: The View From The Centre of A Political Scandal by Rob Wilson

Chris Hallam's World View

What is it like to be at the centre of a political scandal? We are all keen enough to criticise our politicians when they fall into difficulties, but how many of us would have the strength of character to withstand the ensuing media storm which usually follows?

Although never the victim of such a scandal himself, Tory MP Rob Wilson is well placed to provide an insight into the behind the scenes action which has provided the backdrop to a number of the scandals which have been endured by a number of his colleagues in the last decade. It is a well written and well researched book which goes some way to redressing the balance towards the currently much maligned political class,

Wilson’s political leanings occasionally show, however. Andrew Mitchell of Plebgate in a chapter on the scandal called “Andrew Mitchell’s heartbreak” is described as being “now viewed sympathetically across…

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Underrated: Rob Reiner

Chris Hallam's World View

Rob Reiner has directed some of the best loved films ever made.

He has mastered different genres to the extent that you might not have realised that some of his films were even made by the same person. Who would, after all, assume A Few Good Men was linked to This is Spinal Tap? Or that Misery had anything to do with The Princess Bride? Or even that When Harry Met Sally was directed by the same man as Stand By Me?

Reiner directed them all.

Reiner has a long background in comedy. His father Carl Reiner was a noted US comedy star (now in his nineties) and directed the Steve Martin classic The Man With Two Brains. And like Ron Howard, Rob Reiner was a familiar face to US TV audiences long before he became a director. He was a regular on the long running Seventies US comedy show…

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Book review: Speaking Out, by Ed Balls

Honestly. What a missed opportunity. The comic possibilities of a potential title for former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls were seemingly almost endless.

Here are just a few: Balls Revealed, Balls Exposed, Balls Up, Balls Out, Iron Balls, New Balls Please!, Strictly Come Balls, Golden Balls, Better Ed Than Dead.

Instead, this book published by Hutchinson has the extremely dull title, Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics. One just hopes when the time comes for his wife, Yvette Cooper MP to reflect on her political career, she is more imaginative.

May I suggest, It Shouldn’t Happen To Yvette?

Perhaps Ed didn’t want to look stupid. He was a serious contender for national leadership as recently as last year after all. Labour’s defeat and the loss of his own seat were a big personal shock to him. As with the late John Smith, he is probably one of the most capable post-war Shadow Chancellors never to make it to the position of Chancellor Of the Exchequer itself.

The book is not in chronological order but linked thematically. He talks frankly about his stammer, the hard years under the brilliant but volatile Gordon Brown, his eventual falling out with Ed Miliband, his support for Norwich City (yawn!) and his running. He has a sense of humour too. Let us not forget his response to George Osborne’s claim in 2012 that the Chancellor had delivered a “Robin Hood Budget”. Balls charged that on the contrary, Osborne “couldn’t give a Friar Tuck.”
A good book then, but what a shame about the title! After all, if he really doesn’t want to look stupid why is he currently appearing on Strictly Come Dancing, attracting more attention than ever before?

As Lord Heseltine once said: it’s not Brown’s fault. It’s Balls.

Blu-ray review: Carol

Chris Hallam's World View

Cate Blanchett plays Carol, a middle aged, middle class American housewife who in the middle of the twentieth century finds herself in the middle of a messy marital breakdown slap bang in the middle of the festive season. Indeed, Carol is in the throes of her Christmas shopping, when she runs into Therese (Mara) a young assistant in a department store. From the outset, it is clear the two have a strong mutual interest in each other, one which extends way beyond the specifications of the model railway set Carol is purchasing for her young daughter. Even today, with different social mores and the existence of mobile phones, such a relationship would encounter a number of obstacles along the way. It is, of course, even harder still in 1952.

Director Todd Haynes has already demonstrated his faculty for recapturing the feel of the Douglas Sirk films of the 1950s, in…

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Book review: Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography. Volume Two Everything She Wants

Chris Hallam's World View

This is the second volume of Charles Moore’s three volume official biography of the first British woman Prime Minister and deals with the middle years of her premiership from the aftermath of her 1982 victory in the Falklands to her third and last election win in June 1987. These were the golden years for the Iron Lady: perhaps this period should be called “the Iron Age”?

Council houses are sold, utilities are privatised and opposition from Michael Foot’s and Neil Kinnock’s Labour, the SDP and the unions is aall crushed underfoot. Thatcher also exploits her ties to US President Reagan to mostly good effect and survives the 1984 Brighton bomb.

Moore is a former Daily Telegraph editor but despite this conservative bias is not always unaware of the lady’s faults. She never knew how to deal with her wayward son Mark, was lucky to survive the Westland Affair, was stubbornly blind…

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Some kings called George

Chris Hallam's World View

This week saw St George’s Day and to celebrate, here’s a quick round up of all the British kings called George…

George I (1714-1727)

German. Born in Germany. Only spoke German. Didn’t like England and spent most of his time in Germany. Buried in Germany.

George II (1727-1760)

(George I’s son). The last king to lead his men into battle. Died on the toilet, like that other king, Elvis.

George III (1760-1820)

(George II’ s grandson). The longest reigning British king (sixty years) although did not reign  for as long as his granddaughter Victoria (63 years) or her own great great granddaughter Elizabeth II, although he would not have not have known that as he was a) mad and b) dead. Sometimes just called “King George” so as not to confuse Americans.

George IV (1820-1830)

(George III’s son). Regent first. Fat, lazy and lecherous rather like Henry VIII, Edward VII or…

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Book review: May We Be Forgiven by AM Homes

Chris Hallam's World View

 

Tender hearted readers be warned: AM Homes‘s latest book opens with a series of dramatic events unveiled at such a breathless pace that you might feel you cannot keep up.

Henry is the narrator and the brother of George, a successful TV executive who Henry is well aware has a violent streak. Henry thus knows he is taking a risk kissing George’s wife. He takes even more of a risk when he subsequently beds her while George is away, George having killed two people in his car and been sectioned. Unfortunately, George escapes and on finding the two in bed together bashes his wife’s head in with a lamp. Henry escapes unharmed (at least physically). All of this occurs within the first fifteen pages of this 500 page novel.

Mercifully, the pace slows down after that and indeed as with Homes’s earlier This Book Will Save Your Life, relatively…

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DVD review: The Honourable Woman

Chris Hallam's World View

DVD review: The Honourable Woman
BBC Worldwide
When not laying into any of our other more successful institutions such as the National Health Service or our history of successful gun control, the dimmer elements of the British right wing often like to attack the BBC. Why can’t be as impartial and balanced as something like The Sun or The Daily Mail they ask? Sometimes they attack it for declining standards.
And guess what? Just as they are generally wrong about everything from the brilliance of Michael Gove to their dislike of the working classes, they are wrong about this too. Just when you think they might be right (perhaps during the preamble to an episode of Strictly Come Dancing), something like The Honourable Woman comes along and reminds everyone how great TV can be on the BBC.
Make no mistake: The Honourable Woman is serious high quality stuff. A gripping…

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