Richard D North.

A couple of years ago, I had a run-in with my brain. I like its not having a precise diagnosis, and even better that it only happened once, briefly. (Insurers please note.) Read more...

A couple of years ago I had a.... No that's boring. Hell, I'm 67, I am in the zone, no more or less than that, so far. I have had the odd brush, the odd procedure, I take the meds... Read more...

I like my bus rides into town. We are a very mixed bunch, but I like best checking out the real-life youngsters I overhear. How like are they to the reality-TV shows and dramas by which I normally get to hear and watch them? How like the young of other generations? Read more...

This summer, I saw Shady Lady: Mission accomplished... running on empty at the Chichester Film Festival and thought it marvellous. I nabbed a DVD of the film on my way out, and some others from Fact Not Fiction Films, and settled on a stormy British winter afternoon to be transported to 1943 and the longest range bombing mission ever then attempted, from Darwin, to  Balikpapan, on the island of Borneo, 1300 miles away. Read more...

Chris Allinson, a master in portraiture (paint) and Haiku (brevity) took me to the excellent Bridge Inn at Shoreham-by-Sea ("fresh local fish", lively mixed crowd), and put my hat on straight about my "poetry". Please note my quotation marks. He said something like, "I like your stuff about Alfie and Bernardine Bishop, but it's not really poetry". Before I got upetty, he smoothly proceeded, "You ought to be looking at Haibun". Read more...

Most middle-aged people with any sense of history have had plenty of opportunities to try to get to grips with the horrors of the Japanese exploitation of their prisoners of war. On the face of it, the extraordinary real-life story of Eric Lomax's journey from victim to forgiveness would have made a wonderful film. But it hasn't, I think.... Read more...

As many reviewers have said, and I think Frank Kermode in the Guardian is about right, this is a richly-involving movie with a decent narrative in which paint-dryer and something close to a domestic thriller are combined. Comparisons with Jane Austen are justified. But there is a question as to political correctness, too... Read more...

I had an interesting outing on Iain Dale's LBC show yesterday, invited to comment on the Met Office's apparent disavowal of David Cameron's remarks in Prime Minister’s Questions on the recent storms and possible, likely or probable links to climate change. I remarked, perhaps a little casually, that the Met Office's tune - I should perhaps have emphasised tone - had changed somewhat. Once quite the cheer-leader for what one might disparagingly call alarmism, it now seems to emphasise uncertainty. Read more...

Now we have had Redford, Hanks and Bullock battle it out, alone in a survival capsule. Yes, Sandra Bullock has George Clooney in tow for some of her trip, and Tom Hanks has some Somalis to deal with, and as a sort of company. But Captain Phillips casts the Somalis as a sort of buzzing pestilence, more a plague than a set of personalities; and George Clooney has a presence which is  absently jokey when it isn't positively ghostly. Which is the winner?  Read more...

As Victoria Coren noted in her TV documentary, Saving Mr Banks is a moving film, and is so even if one supposes that it Disneyfies the creation of Mary Poppins the film, and probably its real creator Walt Disney and possibly the books on which it is based, and maybe even the books' author. Layer upon layer indeed. Read more...