Malta Story
dir. Brian Desmond Hurst (1953)
A verisimilitudinous war story filmed only a decade after the events it portrays, and incorporating archival combat footage. Alec Guinness plays a placidly stiff-upper-lipped archaeologist turned reconnaissance pilot, doing his bit even while falling in love, one wistful eye to the future.
Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime
ed. H.R.F. Keating (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977)
A collection of essays written shortly after Christie’s death, investigating aspects of her life and works and postulating reasons for her success. The authors are admiring but not uncritical, and in many cases were practitioners within the genre. Chummy scholarship, gently enlightening.
The Camera Never Lies: A Book of Extraordinary and Bizarre Photographs
trans. Keith Cameron; foreword by Cyril Fletcher (Webb & Bower, 1982)
A collection of black-and-white photographs from the early 1900s, mostly of French origin, with descriptions written as if contemporaneously. Many of the images are eye-catching; all are faded (reflecting the 1980s publishing date, pre- digital enhancement). The preserved hodgepodge of yesteryear twice-removed.
Blazing Saddles
dir. Mel Brooks (1974)
Brooks crafts a comedy layered with tasteless caricatures; over-the-top expectation gags; cringingly, affectedly b-grade acting (Gene Wilder proving the exception); brash, almost surreal anachronisms; and flights of lunacy that blast beyond the fourth wall. Uproarious in parts, baffling and indefensible in others.
I’m Free! The Complete Are You Being Served?
by Richard Webber with David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd (Orion, 1998)
A paean to the long-running sitcom, complete with actor profiles and episode summaries. There is nothing incisive about the text—any criticism of the programme is brushed over; nobody has anything bad to say—but the photos sprinkled throughout conjure gentle nostalgia.
There’s Trouble Brewing
by Nicholas Blake (Collins Crime Club, 1937)
audiobook read by Kris Dyer (Bolinda, 2016)
The mystery is skilfully put together. Nigel Strangeways has personality (especially as voiced in Dyer’s audiobook reading), yet never really stuns with his deductions. Meantimes, he adds a jarring, rather artificial note by soliloquising at length over possible interpretations of the evidence.
Rocky & Bullwinkle: Jet Fuel Formula
serialised in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, Season 1, Episodes 1-20 (ABC, 1959-1960)
A fast, freewheeling, self-aware cliffhanger serial told across 40 three-minute segments. Bullwinkle the endearingly dim-witted moose and his guileless squirrel pal Rocky battle an equally hapless pair of Cold War spies. Clever allusions and mile-a-minute wordplay underpin the cheap but punchy animation.
The Murder on the Links
by Agatha Christie (The Bodley Head, 1923)
audiobook read by Hugh Fraser (Lamplight, 2014)
Setting aside Hastings and his galling outbreak of instalove, this is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of detective fiction—lucidly told and ingenious, affording an excellent vehicle for Hercule Poirot. There are coincidences, of course, but of the less egregious kind. Misleading title.
The Clicking of Cuthbert
by P. G. Wodehouse (Herbert Jenkins, 1922)
audiobook read by Frederick Davidson (Blackstone, 1998)
Ten golfing short stories, diverting enough when taken individually but together not unlike hacking at the Lernaean Hydra with a niblick. Wodehouse evinces his usual way with words but, tongue-in-cheek fantasy historical tale ‘The Coming of Gowf’ notwithstanding, lacks for club selection.
Tintin: The Red Sea Sharks
by Hergé (Tintin Magazine, 1956-1958)
English Edition trans. Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper (Methuen, 1960)
A curious volume. Hergé oscillates between depicting Tintin in the early adventuring style, condemning the modern slave trade (perhaps the most serious theme in the entire Tintin canon), and revelling in a broad-cast comedy of slapstick. These threads remain disparate and unwoven.