Poetry & prose by Alex Hickman
My novel describes four days in the life of Simon Tindall, a British banker and MEP (he is, or rather was, a close ally of Tony Blair), who discovers he has only a few months to live. Dazed and distraught, Simon begins to evaluate his life, and weigh his successes and failures. Unable to find intimacy with his […]
Read More…“I began Tuesday, January 20, 2009, the same way I had started every day for the past eight years: I read the Bible. One of the passages that final day was Psalm 18:2 – “The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer: my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.” Amen. […]
Read More… I am about to publish my first novel, called 59 Years 4 Days. The novel’s main character is a middle-aged man called Simon who learns that he has a fatal illness. Simon is a baby-boomer, a successful member of the Tony Blair generation (TB happens to be a political friend of Simon’s, and a character in the novel). […]
Read More…I’ve written before about the UK’s need for a strategy for the 21st century. I think David Cameron’s EU referendum pledge + his announcement of a new generational struggle against Islamic terrorism in Africa +the looming referendum on Scottish independence + the shifting priorities of the US under Obama etc. etc. pose interesting questions about […]
Read More…I have been reading Alistair Campbell’s Diaries (Hutchinson, 2007). They are a good read. Campbell, Blair et al come across as a tight unit with good political habits; they talk constantly and disagree and thus refine and evolve, they keep prioritising, above all they keep slogging away. Slogging away is what it’s all about. I gained […]
Read More…It was always going to be tough to (i) follow the tv series and (ii) compress Smiley’s odyssey of detective work, Kremlinology and reminiscence into 130 minutes. In fact, as I walked out of the cinema my first sensation was a hunger pang for the BBC series starring Alec Guinness. This I will act on […]
Read More…During the late 1990s, when I was asked what I did by my neighbour at the twenty-something dinner parties which for a time seemed like an unavoidable component of my social life, my response was so toxic it sometimes hushed the table. “Business for Sterling?”. Tony Blair was in Number Ten, and preparations to stage […]
Read More…“Far fetched” is what David Gardner of the Financial Times calls the argument that 9/11 brought on a generational struggle between the West and a determined and organised enemy. The analogy “overstated the cohesion of the enemy, just as the cold war comparisons inflated it as a threat.” ‘Enduring Freedom’, Gardiner’s review of some anniversary […]
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STUFF HAPPENS 