Tower and Town, March 2020

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A Good Read

It’s March, and I do hope that if you were rash enough to embark on any kind of change-your-life regime in January you’ve given it up and are ready to retire to the sofa with a good book. If you really want to make drastic reforms, wait a few weeks until the clocks go forward, you’ll have a much better chance of success in springtime.

Or be like me and read books about other people’s lives and interests – they’re always more exciting anyway. In the case of Keggie Carew, life is interesting, awkward, adventurous and (occasionally justifiably) paranoid. Quicksand Tales, her book of vignettes, essays, call them what you will, is funny and clever and, she says, all entirely true. I loved the descriptions of a truly excruciating writing workshop, a stay at Scotland’s most horrible hotel and a meditation on how gardening is all about murder. This eccentric collection is hard to categorise, but a very enjoyable read, especially if schadenfreude is your thing (everyone needs a hobby).

I have a completely unscientific theory that readers are also radio-listeners – something to do with creating one’s own pictures, maybe? If you stop to think about it, radio is utter magic. Charlie Connelly is a true radio enthusiast, listener and broadcaster, and Last Train to Hilversum is his celebration of the history and personalities of this most immersive and intimate medium. From the electrophone, through Beatrice Harrison and her cello, to the switch-off of the analogue signal, Connelly looks at the broadcasting content and the technology. He visits weeny remote little commercial stations, talks to well-known broadcasters and revives memories of big names and events (and scandals) of the past. And do you remember the SOS messages?

Finally, if we’re considering other lives, in A Bit of a Stretch Chris Atkins has written about an experience most of us will hope never to have – that of being sentenced to a term in prison. A documentary film-maker, Atkins was sentenced to six years for tax fraud. Advised to keep diaries while inside he has used them to create this record of how the penal system in this country fails so dismally. Shocking, despairing, amusing, it’s an eye-opening call for progressive modernisation.

Debby Guest