Niall's writing blog

England Expects From time to time, a would-be edgy Tweeter or columnist will shock us all by stating or suggesting that the heritage British...

Last year an old friend of mine gave me a book for my birthday. Not an unusual occurrence; but this relatively short and conversational volu...

I Anne Boleyn was not black. The Boleyns were old East Anglian gentry, servants to the Crown, prosperous merchants, clerics. They had been p...

Shortly after the Second World War, George Orwell wrote a paean to his ideal London pub, in an essay called The Moon Under Water . The titul...

“I'll tell you how l feel about Prohibition. lt is the law of the land.” So proclaims Eliot Ness, Treasury agent, at the start of The ...

Quis est iste, qui venit?  Who is this, that is coming? An unsettling question from ‘Oh Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad’ , by MR Jam...

(I was sent a review copy of this book by the publisher.) What is social media doing to us? You don’t need to be a relentless pessimist to s...

On the recommendation of a Twitter friend, I recently watched a film from 1948, The Guinea Pig , starring Richard Attenborough. It follows...

The Golden Age Of Murder Martin Edwards This is an absolute delight. Edwards is not always the most reliable judge of quality in Golden ...

Let me tell you a story you've heard before - at the cinema, or on TV, or in pop music. A young, clever person chafes at the tedium, sta...