Material Witness

Living like Torres for a day, running the London Marathon

On the last day of the 2019 season 65,000 gathered at the Estadio Metropolitano to pay homage to Fernando Torres as he played his final game for Atlético de Madrid. It was an emotional occasion. Torres is the kid from Fuenlabrada, el niño, who rose through the ranks to become a club legend. He rose to a magnificent occasion, scored twice and had grown men in tears everywhere as the noise reached a crescendo and his name rang out around the stadium.

It was difficult to imagine what being Fernando Torres in those circumstances would be like until last Sunday in London when an estimated 750,000 came out on the streets to cheer on 42,000 runners. That number included 39656, a jogger from Madrid aiming to overcome a difficult experience in 2019 and run a sub four hour race for the first time.

There are people on the streets throughout the whole course, but just after mile six the course comes into Greenwich on Trafalgar Road, and it is here for the first time that the pavements are packed with people. The wall of noise that greets runners as they turn towards the Cutty Sark is extraordinary, so loud in fact that there may even have been something in my eye as I ran up King William Walk.

 

The experience is repeated six miles later as the route crosses Tower Bridge. The volume is incredible and the minute or it takes to get to the north bank is very emotional. Running under those famous towers is wonderful, and it’s no surprise that so many runners stop to take selfies. Were it not for the fear of seizing up, I might have done the same.

There are areas of the course that are much less populated, and so I am particularly grateful to the man on Hill Reach in Woolwich yelling that the top of the hill was near and that it’s all downhill from there. The small groups on the streets in the quieter parts of Rotherhithe and Deptford were also very welcome. Running can be a lonely business, a mental battle as much as a physical one and the shouts of “Come on Ben, you’ve got this”, on Poplar High Street could not have been timelier.

This is around mile 20 and the infamous marathon “wall” when energy levels are at their lowest. That’s OK though because the people of East London have “got this”. They’ve got jelly babies and all the vocal encouragement you need to break through the mental barriers and finish the race.

Over the 26.2 miles I heard my name – or possibly that of the celebrity running just behind me – several hundred times. I cannot describe the lift it provides. Every single one of those is a small Torres moment, a recognition of the blood, sweat and tears that goes into preparing for and running those 26 miles. Wherever possible I acknowledged that moment of kindness, with a nod or a raised fist, in part to say thank you, in part to encourage them to keep providing the same boost to the runners following. (One piece of advice to future marathon runners, try to have a very short, one syllable name. I’m sure it helps.)

This is the spirit of the London Marathon: 42,000 runners, each with their own story and their own motivation, being dragged around the course by the incredible goodwill and generosity of the people who come out onto the streets to cheer them on. If there was a way to bottle that goodwill you could solve most of the world’s problems very quickly.

It’s an incredible privilege to take part and on this occasion I was running well enough that at the 23 mile mark, just as the route passes Tower Bridge for the second time, I was able to relax and soak it all in knowing that the time I wanted was all but in the bag.

So I was able to coast through the City to Westminster along Birdcage Walk and past Buckingham Place to the finish line in a time of 3:58:47. And during that time I was able to reflect on how lucky I was to have the help of so many people to achieve this. I owe them all a lot of thanks. First to Jane for just letting me do it. Running a marathon is a selfish and disruptive business, sometimes taking whole days out of weekends for long training runs and recovery. To her and my daughters and my parents and Ben and Hector who came out onto the streets to support me. To Adam who put together the perfect training plan that made sure I arrived in London in the best condition. To Nicole and the UK Youth team for their support and encouragement. (They’re looking for runners for April). And finally to everyone who generously sponsored me and ensured I hit both my targets for the race, and in particular Tilly whose offer of meals was a particularly good source of sponsorship.

And if you’re out there reading this and wondering if the London Marathon is for you, all I can say is, give it a go. It’s a joyful, thrilling, and, yes, sometimes painful experience, and I wouldn’t have missed my Torres moment for the world.

Bookmarks, Bond and tea - life with and without the Queen

Tucked away in a shoe box here, with other treasures including adolescent love letters, expired passports and Somerset membership cards, is a green leather bookmark embossed with silver print.

The bookmark was given to me in 1977 by my junior school, the Highlands in Tilehurst, to mark the silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth the Second. The following year, the Queen visited Reading. We were marched out of school to a roadside to see her. It was, to be honest, a somewhat underwhelming experience. She drove past and didn’t even stop to say hello. 

It was the only time I saw the Queen in person. And yet she has been a presence during the full fifty years. She has been in the background, in the papers, on stamps and in the inside front cover of my passport requesting various fractious border officials allow me “to pass freely without let or hinderance”.

She has been both there and not there throughout 50 years, and to be honest again, I’ve lived most of those without giving her much thought.

Now, however, she is not there at all, and like many others I am thinking about what she meant to me and to the country, as well as what it means to be without her.

For almost all of us, Elizabeth is the only monarch we have known. The longevity is extraordinary. The longest I have stayed in a job is seven years. The Queen outlasted the school, which closed a decade or so ago. She outlasted all the adolescent romances, of course, but not the cricket club. We have lived the entirety of our lives in the second Elizabethan age.

Her life, however well lived and however dutiful her service, will not define those seven decades. They are likely to be remembered for the Cold War, the arrival of the internet and the relentless march of digital technology, for unprecedented access to travel, for advances in medical treatment, for globalization, for climate change. And scores of other developments, good and bad.

But the Queen lived them all, meeting Eisenhower and Obama, Gorbachev and Putin, McGuinness and Mugabe, Monroe and Sinatra, Attenborough and Berners-Lee, Bobby Moore and Brian Lara. She appointed 15 Prime Ministers, one earlier this week, although it feels like last year.

She was both there and not there. Not taking political decisions, not taking positions even, but helping to facilitate the work of others, providing a reassuring, perhaps even maternal presence on the national and world stage.

And she’s been a presence in our home, even here in Madrid. Downstairs in the kitchen are three commemorative tea caddies, marking her golden, diamond and platinum jubilees. There are mugs and tea towels, there is crystal and china.

In 2012 she came into the house in the most unexpected and unforgettable way, with James Bond! So it seemed she had a sense of humour and fun. I’d never really thought about what she was actually like. While, for better or (mostly) worse the personalities, whims and caprices of every other royal has been turned inside out by a combination of the tabloids and their own PR machines, the Queen has maintained the mystery the monarchy used to consider vital to its survival.

And since 2016 she’s been on Netflix. Not her, of course, but Claire Foy and Olivia Colman. It’s best to treat The Crown as fictional, even if it has taught me some history I hadn’t previously known. But even then, as her grandson Harry said, “loosely it gives you a rough idea about what that lifestyle, the pressures of putting duty and service above family and everything else, what can come from that.”

And understanding that notion of service is very important, as it’s the essence of monarchy in the twenty first century. Every obituary published in the last 24 hours, every tribute references it. As Emmanuel Macron, in a beautifully crafted statement, put it, she was, ‘faithful to the heavy burden of her duties’.   

That burden has now been passed on to her son, and the Queen, who has been the one constant in times that have been extraordinarily turbulent, has gone. I’ve seen it written that she was a unifying force, perhaps the only one, in a country that is fragmented by many fault lines: urban and rural; rich and poor; north and south; progressive and conservative; remain and leave. (And it should be pointed out that there are communities in our disunited Kingdom where the Queen and the monarchy she represents are divisive themselves.) So who or what can unite us now?

Of course, there is a new monarch, a King. This alone will take some getting used to. Singing the national anthem for the next five years will be like writing the date in January, remembering too late that it is 2022 and not 2021. Good Save the Que…, er, King.

Charles, a divisive figure for many reasons, inherits the throne and probably some of the goodwill people felt towards his mother. The rest he will have to earn. There are many who have loved and respected the monarch but not necessarily the institution. His challenge will be to unite the two.     

Queen Elizabeth’s passing is significant and momentous. I haven’t seen her since 1978, but she was always there. And now she is not.

50 Books #10 - Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser

If writing funny was easy, there would be far more comic novels on the shelves of your local book shop than there are. Compare and contrast the average daily television schedule with those fiction shelves. Television is stacked with stand-up, sitcoms and romantic comedies. Books, not so much. If you don't believe me, try a Google search for 'best humorous novels'. It's thin pickings. 

Through my own years of reading I can think of very few novelists who have done it for me. Sue Townsend and Douglas Adams, when I was young, and Tom Sharpe, whose books seemed almost subversive. Evelyn Waugh falls into the category, and Wodehouse, of course. Later in life I came across the great American satirist Carl Hiaasen. 

 

And then there is George MacDonald Fraser and Flashman, the bully he ripped from the pages of Tom Brown's Schooldays and made an unwilling participant in just about every major conflagration of the Victorian age, from the Charge of the Light Brigade to Indian Mutiny and much much more besides. 

Flashman, "unregenerate blaggard, bully and coward" according to the writer, is a creation of the very greatest comic genius. MacDonald Fraser picks him up on his expulsion from Rugby School for drunkenness in the 1830s. His father, minor gentry in Leicestershire, buys Harry a commission in the 11th Light Dragoons and one of the most disgraceful, eventful and yet decorated careers in British military history is launched. 

Flashman is a charming, handsome, philandering coward with the luck of the devil and the knack of forever being in the wrong place at the wrong time but somehow with the right outcome. Just about his only saving grace - besides his humour - is that Flashman is aware of, and acknowledges, all his faults: the cowardice, mendacity, lechery, cheating and disloyalty.  

MacDonald Fraser, a veteran of the Burma campaign in the Second World War and subsequently a journalist and screenwriter, guides Flashman through 12 campaigns, during which he meets Wellington, Bismarck, Queen Victoria ("she always fancied me"), Lincoln, Grant and a host of other statesmen, warriors and characters. And just as remarkable as the consistently well delivered humour is the telling of history. 

It's one of my great regrets that I stopped formal study of history at 13. As a result Flashman has been an important source of historical knowledge and the books are renowned for their historical accuracy, even if they are told from a peculiar perspective, and notwithstanding that Flashman obviously wasn't there. And none more so than the first Afghan war and the disastrous retreat from Kabul, detailed in the first novel and which is where Flashman earns his first undeserved laurels, when the usual combination of cowardice and sheer blind luck leaves him the only survivor of the massacre at Piper's Fort. There he is found by the relieving force clutching the flag (in reality trying to surrender it) and is hailed a hero as none of the witnesses of his appalling behaviour is alive to tell the real tale.

And so it goes, in the Crimea with Cardigan and the 600; bound to a cannon at the Siege of Cawnpore; with Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn; fighting pirates with James Brooke in Borneo and holed up in Harper's Ferry with John Brown. Each story is richly told, full of fabulous characters both fictional and historical and with Flashman in the middle, up to no good.

While there are so many moments that are laugh out loud funny, it also was in the first Flashman that I came to appreciate MacDonald Fraser's knack for telling history stories but also the brilliance and fluency of the commentary on the evolving catastrophe, told in the inimitable style of our cowardly hero. The following dissection of the leadership of General Elphinstone (Elphy Bey) in Kabul stood out from the very first:

"I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgment - in short, for the true talent for catastrophe - Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day. Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganized enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again.”

That writing takes some beating. And there are 12 books full of it. They are funny, entertaining, fast-paced and enlightening - and I loved them so much I named a dog for them. There is really nothing like them. 

 

 

 

50 Books #9 - Every Dead Thing by John Connolly

They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but had I not, I might never have come across John Connolly and Charlie Parker. 

On one of my frequent visits to the excellent Murder One bookshop on the Charing Cross Road, I came acros Every Dead Thing, the first of a series that has now been successfully running for more than two decades. The cover was hard to ignore with its striking anatomical image, that might be called "distress in death". With it came the strapline, "The most terrifying thriller since Silence Of The Lambs". 

That was more than enough for me, and I left Murder One, which sadly closed its doors in 2009, with one more book than I had gone in for, as I always seemed to. 

In 1999, I was a couple of years into my obsession with crime fiction and reading everything that James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin and countless others were publishing. Connolly offered something different. While the supernatural elements to the Charlie Parker books has become increasingly influential as the series has developed, there was something other-worldly and different about the PI and his stories from the start.

Parker, his life detached from its moorings by the murder of his wife and daughter, inhabits a dark, dangerous and violent world, one where the ghosts of the past haunt the living. That darkness is evident not just in his investigations but in both his adversaries and his allies, and the exploration of the dubious and complex moral trajectories of all are a key feature of the novels. 

Complex and detailed characterisation is an important attraction of the series as Connolly takes the time and trouble to develop the stories even of peripheral characters. This contributes to novels that are longer than average - Every Dead Thing comes in 480 pages - but there's never a sense of needless digression.  Connolly writes rich and multi-dimensional stories that explore the boundaries between the living and the dead, the thin line that often separates good and evil and the fragility of our lives. The books also have a profound sense of place, particularly in Parker's home state of Maine, where the great forests of the north hide mystery and danger.  

Since 1999 he has published 19 more Parker novels (and other work besides) and the series has never lost any of that edge I first encountereed 23 years ago. In 2018, I listened to the entire series again in a matter of a few months, hoping that this would help reveal some of the secrets and threads of the stories that my memory inevitably lost over two decades of annually dipping into Parker's world. I wasn't disappointed. Each book has its own story and structure but taken as a whole, this is an epic and compelling journey with layers and layers to uncover. And as the supernatural has infused the books more and more, they've opened an entirely new dimension and become even more compelling. 

My first edition of Every Dead Thing is one of my prized books, and I was grateful that Connolly signed it for me on a visit to Madrid a few years back. He's also been generous with his time, giving me this interview in 2014, in which he explored his influences, his doubts and the fact that he regards the Parker stories as "hopeful", rather than "dark or bleak". Parker and other are on a journey of redemption. 

“As a Catholic the word redemption comes with a certain spiritual and supernatural baggage has resonance,” he said.  “It seemed appropriate I could explore the implications of redemption through novels and that’s why the supernatural  elements become more pronounced. It’s about the possibility and the cost of redemption as redemption costs sacrifice and sacrifice is painful.”

Parker has certainly endured his share of pain. Over the past 23 years I don't think there's a writer I've read more, of and certainly reviewed more, and a selection of those are linked below. It's been a spritual and emotional journey and long may it continue. 

A Game of Ghosts 2017

A Time of Torment 2016

A Song of Shadows 2015 

The Wolf in Winter 2014

The Whisperers 2010

The Lovers 2009

The Reapers 2008

 

 

REVIEW: A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

After the collapse of Republican resistance to Franco's nationalist forces in 1939, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards fled the country and the violent repression that was to follow. Many eventually found their way from Europe to Latin America, a natural place of refuge for Spanish speakers seeking a new life. 

Some of those found their way to Chile,  the "long petal of sea and white and snow" as beautifully described by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and the inspiration for the title of Isabel Allende's magnificant novel of love, suffering, survival and political upheaval. 

Neruda plays a small but pivotal role in the novel, which depicts his involvement in the organization of the refugee ship SS Winnipeg, which took Spanish refugees from Bordeaux to Chile in September 1939. A Long Petal of the Sea tells the story of two Catalans among those 2,200 refugees: war widow Roser and her army doctor brother, Victor Dalmau. Allende charts first their war story and then their attempts to rebuild their lives in Santiago and through to the 1973 coup that deposed the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende (the author's uncle) and unleashed a wave of repression, killings and disappearances similar to that of Franco's Spain. 

This is vintage Allende, and for me her most captivating novel since The House of the Spirits, published in another lifetime in 1982. As in that book, Allende captures the sweeping drama of family life with verve, empathy and sometimes painful honesty as she details the inner lives of her characters, their hopes and fears, with intensity and emotion. And as she does so, she also intertwines the personal with the public illustrating the impact - both good and bad - that political change has on our lives, often leaving us at the mercy of events we have no control over. 

The summer of 2022 feels like a good time to read a novel that shows history repeating itself in the space of just a handful of decades. It emphasizes how fragile our democracies and our taken-for-granted freedoms really are. Victor Dalmau, a man who dedicates his life to serving others, twice pays a devastating price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time - and on the wrong side. 

A Long Petal of the Sea is hugely enjoyable and very sobering at the same time. While it celebrates the endurance of the human spirit and the power of love, it also highlights our capacity for inflicting chaos and pain on ourselves and others. A truly magnificent novel by an important and beautiful writer. 

 

 

The return to Westeros: episode one of House of the Dragon

It has to be nerve-wracking, doesn't it? That moment when your follow up to the most successful fantasy show of all time goes live. In your hands, the future of a powerful, much-celebrated franchise, and on your shoulder there's Amazon, which has gone full Hobbit in pursuit of the sword and sandals mantle. It's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power show starts in two weeks. 

So there's quite a bit at stake for HBO and the makers of House of the Dragon, set 200 years before the events that took place in Game of Thrones.  The final episodes of GoT weren't loved by everyone, which perhaps made the first episode's landing even more important. 

So, how did they do? Well, I thought they absolutely smashed it. 

All the things that made GoT a massive success are on display. Just to remind you where you are the scene opens with dragons soaring through the sky before depositing a Targaryen princess at King's Landing. There is politics, palace intrigue, plenty of violence, more than a hint of Targaryen lunacy, a huge amount of sex and loads and loads of great acting.

And in particular there is Paddy Considine as King Viserys and Matt Smith as his dangerous bad boy brother and heir, Daemon. Smith, with his flowing silver locks and the playful menace in his eyes, is every inch the Targaryen trouble maker, while Considine carries the weight of the Iron Throne and his family's status heavily. One scene between them is electric, and Smith in particular dominates the screen every time he appears. 

They are well supported. There is surely more to come from Eve Best as Princess Rhaenys, another potential pretender to the throne and Steve Toussaint as her courtier husband Lord Corlys.  Anf Milly Allcock is great as Visery's daughter Rhaenyra. 

The first episode is well paced, making the introductions and seeding the storylines as required, but with plenty of action to off-set. So far, it's a smaller world than GoT and a narrower storyline, and that might work well even if there is, of course, plenty of room to expand. And of course the sets and design are sumputous and everything looks great. 

So, so far so good, and I'm looking forward to episode two.  

REVIEW: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Every so often I read a book that is so initimidatingly good that I am heistant to review because of the fear that my words could not do it justice. 

Bonnie Garmus's debut novel is one such a book. It is so well conceived, so beautifully written, so charming, clever, funny and moving that the hesitancy was overcome by an urgent need to tell everyone to read it. Read it!

Lessons in Chemistry tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant 1950s (and 60s) chemist adrift in a male-dominated world that cannot and will not put any value on her ground-breaking work when it cannot be attributed to a man. Hers is a world of insitutionalized misogny, of normalized sexual assault and of gender injustice of every kind. And yet, Elizabeth Zott is nobody's victim. She confronts the world on her own terms, refusing to cave to the unfairness of her situation and her intense frustration, but instead fighting for win every inch in her battle to be allowed to follow her professional path. 

Defeated in her early attempts to be a research scientist, Elizabeth Zott finds herself instead on television hosting a cooker show called Supper at Six in which she describes her cooking in chemical terms and speaks directly to her audience of women as intellectual equals rather than patronising them as "just housewives" as the rest of the television industry does. Away from the lab, and the television studio, Elizabeth Zott has other crosses to bear, including single parenthood at a time when such lifestyles were frowned upon and ownershp of the world's cleverest dog. One intriguiging sub plot in the book is her daughter Mad's own search for her place in the world. 

If all this sounds like a rather dour business, don't worry. Garmus deals with serious, complex and important issues in the vooks and, like Elizabeth Zott, doesn't shy away from them, but she does so with such wit and lightness of touch that the story sings throughout. 

Elizabeth Zott is quirky, fierce and driven, uncompromising in her relationships with all in her orbit. Her presence is powerful and throughout a narrative that has pace and bite, Garmus builds a world around her populated by (largely) weak and vain men and resourceful, spirited women. It delivers an important message not just about the iniquity of sexual (and other discrimination) but also its sheer wastefulness. 

It is a superb novel that flies by in the blink of an eye, such is the desire to read Elizabeth Zott's story, but it will linger long in the memory. 

 

 

REVIEW: Lying Beside You by Michael Robotham

What I have always loved most about Michael Robotham's writing is the voice that he gives his characters and the honesty with which he explores them: their virtues, flaws, fears, hopes, motivation. He delves into the inner lives that we all have and in doing so raises a mirror to the reader. 

Through nine novels featuring clinical pyschologist Joe O'Loughlin we learn his deepest secrets and his fondest desires. We share his pain and suffer his grief. And there is a profound sense of loss when a much-loved character disappears, as O'Loughlin did in 2018 when he most recently featured in The Other Wife. 

Happily, Robotham returned with two equally compelling characters the following year in Evie Cormac and Cyrus Haven in their debut Good Girl Bad Girl. They're back this year in Lying Beside You, their third outing, and all the mastery of character and the authenticity of voice that so characterised the O'Loughlin novels is on full display.

Cyrus is a forensic psychologist who works with the Nottinghamshire police helping them solve crimes, while also running a private practice. Scarred by the murder of his family by his ilder brother when a young teen, Cyrus carries demons of his own, but these help him understand and empathise with others have suffered. Cyrus, as the series developes, proves to be a collector of damaged souls, and Evie, with her own terrible back story (no spoliers here, read Good Girl Bad Girl), eventually becomes his ward. 

Evie, volatile and unpredictable, is a good foil to Cyrus, who is steady and reliable and the chemistry between the two of them drives the books.

In Lying Beside You, both become embroiled in the investigation of the murder of Rowan Kirk and the disappearance of his daughter, Maya. 

Robotham carefully and skilfully unpeels the layers of a complex plot as the police investigate the crimes, with Cyrus poking them in the right direction. And while the mystery of the fate of the Kirks is satisfying enough in itself, it is the inner lives of Cyrus, and, in particular, Evie that give the story its soul and make it very difficult to put down. 

Robotham doesn't attract the attention of some of his peers for his work, but he has put together a bibilography that's up there with anyone else writing thrillers right now, and I can't recommend these books highly enough. 

I also learned at the start of the book that Joe O'Loughlin is going on television later this year with Aidan Turner in the title role. Turner is not who I'd have imagined in the role, but that won't stop me tuning in. Something to look forward to. 

And in researching this piece, I'm surprised to discover I've not reviewed a Robotham book since 2009 - when we were all young - despite the fact that I've read everything he's written since. So here's The Night Ferry, also excellent. 

 

 

 

 

REVIEW: Intimacy / Intimidad on Netflix

Exactly how the Netflix algorithm delivered the Spanish drama Intimacy to me just as I had a few hours to spare, I don't know. I'm just grateful it did.

It's extraordinarily good television, as compelling as anything I've seen this year, as well as topical, brave and honest as it confronts difficult but critical issues facing women in contemporary society. 

The story focuses on the devastation wrought in the lives of two women by the violations of their privacy through the distribution of photos and videos of them engaged in sexual activity. 

 

The first is Malen, the deputy mayor of Bilbao, whose shaming is public as footage of her having sex on a beach with a man who is not her husband is broadcast on the mainstream and social media. The second is Ane, a factory worker, who suffers when footage of her is sent around ny men at her work place. 

Malen, strong, driven and, partially at least, supported, fights for her political life and the chance to achieve her ambition to become mayor. Ane, who holds her secretly privately until it is too much, takes her own life. 

Intimacy then tells the story of Malen's struggle for survival in a Machiavellian, male-dominated political enviornment and the search for justice for Ane driven by her sister Begoña. If the power and intensity of the performances of both Itziar Ituño as Malen and Patricia López Arnaiz as Bego could be captured as energy, climate change could be halted in an instant. Bego, a quiet school teacher thrust into an unimaginable situation, spends perhaps half her time on the screen in tears. And as much as there is sadness for her lost sister in those tears, there is also vast wells of anger and frustration as well as incredible strength. At times it was hard to watch her, but harder still to stop. And in Malen, we see an indomitable will and the heart of a lionness combined with razor sharp political instincts as she fights first for herself and then for her family as her perfidious allies and unscrupulous enemies seek to use her public shaming to unseat. 

I am sure these two will both be in the frame come awards season, but the nominees from this series alone could provide another three. Despite announcing her own death in the opening scene, Ane's story is told through a series of flashbacks in a harrowing performance from Verónica Echegui whose life unravels as she deals alone with her own sense of shame and guilt. Then there is Yune Nogueiras as Malen's daughter Leire who struggles to cope with the fallout of her mother's public humiliation. And then Emma Suárez as Alicia, the cop charged with investigating both cases, who is also dealing with her own demons. These are five phenomenal performances. 

Intimacy is part political drama, part police drama and part domestic drama. Ultimately it is a story about guilt and blame. Malen, Bego, Ane and Leire are victims, and yet the system, the media, the public and even their friends and family are quick to blame and shame them. And such is the shape of the world we live in each blames themself for some element of their situation. And in the background, the men who are responsible deflect, dissemble, conspire and commit crime without the slightest compunction. Theirs is the world and they act accordingly. 

Intimacy follows Unbelievable as a Netflix drama that takes on complex issues with intelligence and subtlety and lays bare the fault lines in our society. With incomparable acting, sharp writing and imaginative cinematography it delivers a powerful and emotional package. See the trailer here. 

 

 

REVIEW: A Killing in November by Simon Mason

And now for something completely different. Or rather someone completely different. Meet DI Ryan Wilkins, slouching onto the Oxford crime scene in ill-fitting tracksuit trousers, mistaken for a teenage offender with that scowl on his youthful face, and just about to put his anger management problems on display. 

"Chav. Poor white trash. Trailer-park ratboy." And this is just how Ryan Wilkins describes himself, to his new partner, DI Ray Wilkins. Yes, they're both called Wilkins. And just to add to the confusion, Ryan's infant son is also named Ryan. 

A Killing in November is the freshest, most original police procedural I've come across since the first time I read the late and much missed Susie Steiner's first Manon Bradshaw novel. And, not incidentally, Mason's first foray into Oxford is the best new crime series since Manon. It is that good. 

Inevitably, with its Oxford setting and its murder in the office of a College provost, comparisons will be made to Morse. Physically and temperamentally, and in their respective backgrounds, Morse and Ryan Wilkins could hardly be any different. Ray is closer to Morse, with his Balliol education and his classical music, while Ryan is more like the working class Lewis, albeit that he has none of Lewis's patience or measured approach to life and work. He is all sharp elbows, profanity and awkward aggression. He is in Oxford only because he left the Wiltshire force in disgrace after an incident with the Bishop of Salisbury. 

But there are shadows of Morse in Ryan's fierce cleverness, his forensic mind and his relentless pursuit of the truth whatever the personal and professional cost. 

And it all works rather brilliantly. The Oxford college setting is perfect for Ryan's first outing,  emphasising his otherness and setting him up in belligerent opposition to the forces of tradition and establishment. And like the great Colin Dexter, Mason brings Oxford alive, in all its Dreaming Towers glory and gloom. 

While the plot itself is interesting enough - a young woman is murdered in the Provost's office while the College is entertaining an Emirati dignitary it is hoping to extract cash from - it is Ryan's relationships with the other two Wilkins that nourish and sustain this book. 

With Ray, "he's a bit up himself", he is abrasive and rude and a most unwelcome intrusion into a life and career that is ordered and predictable. "Let me do the talking," Rays says repeatedly, worried about who Ryan is going to upset next. Of course, the warnings go unheeded. There's a marvelous tension between them throughout, 

And then with young Ryan, to whom he is single parent, he is only sensitivity and care. This is also a compelling, not to say touching, relationship.

A Killing in November is terrific. It's likely to win awards, and at some point, perhaps when Endeavour reaches the end of his road and something new is asked of Oxford, it will make great television. 

My only disappointment was that the sequel is not published until January. Roll on 2023.