Given that I'm going to end up reading them dozens of times, I'm always on the lookout for children's books that are artfully drawn or that have a positive message. This one has both, with rich and colourful illustrations that are worth lingering over to take in all the detail, and a simple story that encourages children to notice the natural world around them. It's imaginative and just a little surreal: "every night the stars come out and go to work in the sky" it reads, as little bow-tied stars climb ladders into the dark. Lovely.
We got it from the library, but it's a keeper and I'm here to buy a copy.
Andy Burrows is a hard man to keep up with. He came to my attention as I Am Arrows, and I've been looking forward to a second album. Instead we've had an album of Christmas songs, and now this, a solo album under the name Andy Burrows.
The good news is that Andy writes intelligent and melodic pop songs, whatever name he might be using today. Company is no exception. It opens strongly with the title track's sweeping melancholia followed by the driving, jangly Because I Know That I Can. If I Had a Heart is a slower piano-driven number, and Hometown boasts an almost cinematic quality.
I can see why Burrows put his name to this album. It seems more personal than I Am… Read more
The wheels came off the British economy in 2007, but that wasn't the beginning of the end for Britain, according to Elliott and Atkinson. The decline started a lot earlier than that - 1914 to be precise.
At the start of WW1 Britain was the world's only superpower, the world's leading exporter, and a major military power. A century later, we've experienced a relative decline as our national prestige has waned and other countries have caught up and overtaken us. We've had no particular strategy as a country, we have allowed a series of imbalances to develop, and there's no obvious way out of it. The economy is "slow-growing, unproductive, unequal, unbalanced and living beyond its… Read more
