Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return Of Sherlock Holmes, Ken Livingstone, You Can't Say That: Memoirs , Simon Scarrow, Sword & Scimitar, Tom Fort, A303: Highway To The Sun

Some easy reads for a change! Nothing about Habsburgs, Scandinavian murders or cartographical inspiration. Reading Sherlock again made me think of all the classic detective fiction I have never read - nearly all Agatha Christie's, Maigret, Peter Wimsey. Maybe that'll be a them in the future. There's still a load of Inspector Montalbano to read though, and I promised myself to read more Van Veeteren. . . Maybe it is time for a Kindle so I can read while putting Libby to bed! At the moment I'm in the room with here for up to an hour. I don't mind as I can sing songs to her and browse the internet, and sit down for a bit. I do wish she would let me sing something other than the Thomas & Friends theme tune or 'The Wheels On the Bus' though. I'm not even allowed to riff on a theme. Any deviation  from wheels/round, wipers,swish, mummies/chatter, daddies/say "don't do that" is immediately met by a forceful 'NO!' from Lib and any hopes of her settling are gone as she sits up ramrod straight to protest the indignity of being forced to listen to incorrect verse.

Ken's memoirs were as subjective as you'd expect, but politically I can’t think of much where I disagree with him other than Foreign policy. I'm not as ready as him to accept the Spanish claim to Gib, the Argentinian claim to the Falklands and the Palestinian claim to the Holy Land; but that probably reveals my Little Englander tendencies rather than being an internationalist. On everything else - economics, education, transport, health. . . I'm with Ken, a s shining example of an electorally successful unashamedly populist unashamedely left wing politician.  'Sword & Scimitar' was set in the Great Siege of Malta, and was formulaic tosh. I went to see Simon Scarrow talk at Woking Library and found him very engaging, so thought it might be worth a read. The Great Siege is crying out for a great novel or, even better, a great film. Finally, the A303; an ode to a road. It was a fun read, but seemed incomplete; the A303 starts nowhere just outside Basingstoke and finishes with a whimper as a side road in Somerset. All the way through it seemed as if it was the story of part of a journey rather than the whole journey from London to the south west. Maybe the A30 for a companion piece?