Still there will be books by Jan Needle
Being the world’s slowest reader, I finally got to grips with Wolf Hall because of the television version, and because having already read Beyond Black I knew the lady is a writer of genius. It’s a measure of how wonderful I find it that after only ten days I‘m on page 313, which is nearly half way through. I thought the TV version was fantastic, too. Almost every scene, up to and including the execution, was mind-blowing. (I didn’t bother with a spoiler alert there, because if anyone doesn’t know who got the chop it might make them read the book. Sorry. I’m being silly.) Sitting in me lonely writer’s bed this morning, though – reluctant to give up and get up halfway through a chapter – I fell to wondering what was the motor for this exhaustive, off-centre, and truly rather frightening revivification of English history. Coupled with an interview or two I’d heard earlier (thank you, World Service), I realized it might be an investigation of what the West is going to ‘do’ about t...