My old mate Ian Abrahams is quietly developing a steady reputation as one of Britain's finest rock biographers. Last year his epic tale of Hawkwind's 30 year astral trip of sex and drugs and rock n roll, Sonic Assassins was a big hit in the Space Rock community. This month, meanwhile, sees the release of Strange Boat, Ian's travelogue of the spiritual journey taken by the Waterboys and, specifically their enigmatic main-man, Mike Scott.
Ian's a good lad - usually! - and a damned fine writer as well as a mate of 20 years standing, so I'm delighted to give Strange Boat a bit of a push (s'cuse the pun). Order it today if your copy of Fisherman's Blues is as scratched-to-buggery as mine:
Whilst I have y'all stuck in amazon.co.uk, I'd also like to recommend the latest Doctor Who novel by my old friend, partner, brother and guru, Martin Day:
Wooden Heart isn't - quite - as good as The Hollow Men but it's easily the best new Who novel released in a couple of years and it's great to know that Marty's going to cop, hopefully, a big pay-day for this one now that Doctor Who novels are selling in numbers that we used to dream about back in the 90s!
I'm currently reading Stephen Dorril's quite extraordinary biography of Oswald Mosley, Black Shirt. An intense and fantastically written book about a thoroughly repulsive subject matter that, somehow, manages to be both balanced - as a good biography should - and yet still appalled by almost everything that the subject stood for.
For all the disgraceful tonguing that Mosley got from the British press when he died in 1980 - who can forget Not the 9 O'Clock News majestic parody 'Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley' in the week that the Daily Torygraph, for example, was calling Britain's own would-be dictator a 'compassionate and humane' individual? - never let it be forgotten that this man's ideas of civil liberty ended at the toe-cap of the jackboots that his blackshirt thugs used with such venom on the skulls of anybody who tried to cross them on Cable Street in 1936.
It's important that books like Dorril's be read and understood as a warning to why things like fascism must never, ever be tolerated again:
Also currently flicking through Richard Toye's Lloyd George & Chruchill: Rivals for Greatness (MacMillan), Don Jordan & Michael Walsh's White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in American (Mainstream), Steve Overbury's Guns, Cash and Rock 'n' Roll: The Managers (Mainstream), Patrick Bishop's Bomber Boys (HarperCollins) and David Tossell's Grovel: The Story & Legacy of the Summer of 1976 (Know the Score Books) at least some of which will feature in either the May or June Book Clubs.
The third part of my No-Honestly-it's-a-Buffy-article-farewell-tour (well, technically, the fourth part if you count the Deep Thought piece in the latest TV Zone Special that is, apparently, accruing death threats on certain parts of the Internet as we speak!), my season three overview - The Mayor of Simpleton - appears in the latest issue of Xpose - issue 103. I suppose I'd better get working on the season four piece, that's supposed to be in before the end of the month!
http://www.visimag.com/xpose/x103_display.htm
And finally, just to let you all know that I've signed up to appear as a guest at the Manitoba Comicon convention later in the year.
So, if by any chance you're going to be in Winnipeg on 27th and 28th October ... that'll be nice!
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