Richard D North welcomes you to his blog. (It links to my old site, now archived.) I am a right-winger, in love with the free market and arguing against the soft-left, liberal, green, PC consensus. Oh, and I'm a conflicted softie. A bit hippy and arty round the edges too. More »
Posted by RDN under Politics and campaigns on 13 May 2012. No comments.
I want to have and give some explanation for why I was pleased when Coulson/Brooks did well at the Leveson inquiry and why – this is even trickier – I was not sorry to see Robert Jay bested…. More »
Posted by RDN under TV and Radio on 7 May 2012. 2 comments.
What a wonderful crop of young women we have in our crime thrillers just now. They are all obsessive, let’s say. Their work-life balance isn’t what it might be. Some stray into the autism spectrum and some claim great chunks of it. I make ten, and counting….
Posted by RDN under Mind and body on 6 May 2012. No comments.
The great thing is to go forth and get hold of the books of this very great middle to low brow writer of adventure romances, and read them. If this piece delays you in doing so, then ignore it. If it is what may push you into the Shute fan club, then please read on… More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body on 6 May 2012. No comments.
I would love to pose the question: Is Rosamond Lehmann the best of the mid-20th Century female novelists? I am nowhere near well-enough-read to opine very certainly.
I am thinking of the world before Iris Murdoch (my mother’s favourite during the 1950s and 1960s) and Muriel Spark (whose books I loved in the 1970s). Lehmann’s core competition comes from Stella Gibbons, Betty Miller, Jean Rhys, Rose Macaulay, Elizabeth Bowen. Viriginia Wolf ought to be in there, but perhaps the point is that Lehmann and the others are middlebrow and Woolf’s highbrow competition doesn’t count. More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body on 1 May 2012. No comments.
In 1977, Anne Brunskill of the World’s End Press kindly held my hand in producing a poster for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. It was made with wooden and metal letters and the zillions of ornaments she had to hand in a Thameside studio, and printed on hairy paper (now a bit damaged). Here are three details from the work. More »
Posted by RDN under Right-wing Guide (RWG2NE) on 1 May 2012. No comments.
Coming soon… (September, 2012)
RDN’s new book, The Right-wing Guide to Nearly Everything, is the most surprising right-wing book you’ll ever dip, browse or read. More »
Posted by RDN under Chernobyl legacy / Climate change / Politics and campaigns on 4 April 2012. No comments.
I attended a climate change conference and want just to nail some of the arguments as I see them. (It was held under Chatham House, “no names, no pack-drill” rules.) More »
Posted by RDN under Climate change / Economic crisis on 13 March 2012. No comments.
It seems a fabulous cheek for Mssrs Porritt, Burke, Secrett and Juniper (ex-directors of Friends of the Earth) to complain that the UK’s nuclear industry will be run by France, for France. More »
Posted by RDN under Uncategorized on 5 March 2012. No comments.
I had a brief but fairly decent outing on BBC Radio 5 (0930hrs, yesterday Sunday, 4 March 2012), discussing protest with Billy Bragg. The essence of our disagreement seemed to be that he thought that most protest was valuable and I said surprisingly little was. More »
Posted by RDN under At the movies / Politics and campaigns on 12 January 2012. No comments.
The worst charges one can make against the movie Iron Lady don’t stand up. I see that her family and close admirers might be angry about it, but the rest of us can probably be glad there’s an account of her time in office and life which is broadly fair (and broadly supportive, probably in spite of itself). To the slightly differing but very positive comments by Matthew Parris (in the LA Times) and by Iain Dale in his blog I mostly want to reinforce the latter’s sense that this film will help the non-committal see why Mrs T was a force for good. More »
