Tag: writing

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Insight into the formation and evolution of a politician

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Leo Varadkar reveals his fascinating experience as Irish prime minister at a time of much change and turbulence. Leo Varadkar was an unlikely Taoiseach- the youngest on taking office in 2017, the first Taoiseach to be gay and the first person of colour to be Taoiseach. Equally unlikely was his decision to bow out of politics in his mid-forties. Now, liberated from the constraints of office, he tells his fascinating story with characteristic courage and candour, and provides a unique insight into the formation and evolution of a senior politician. In Speaking My Mind, Leo Varadkar shares his pride in … Continue reading Insight into the formation and evolution of a politician

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SattarBuksh wins trademark case against Starbucks

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Sattar Buksh, a Karachi-based café owner famous for his humorous menu items like the “Besharam Burger”, LOC Pizza, got into trademark branding dispute with Starbucks. The multinational claimed that the resemblance in logo and name could confuse customers, dilute its brand and potentially infringe on trademark laws. When you think Starbucks, the multinational, you picture the iconic green siren. In Karachi two Pakistani entrepreneurs Rizwan Ahmad and Adnan Yousuf, opened a café called Sattarbuksh,  (buksh, meaning servant). They think it is parody not piracy. Although at first glance their logo resembled like a cheeky twin of Starbucks, except instead of mermaid, … Continue reading SattarBuksh wins trademark case against Starbucks

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Vanishing skills and traditions

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Craft Land Britain was once a craft land and for generations what we made with our hands shaped our identities, built our communities and defined our regions. Historian and fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, James Fox travels the length of Britain to seek out the country’s last great craftspeople in Craftland and chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that used to govern every aspect of life on these shores. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and Coopers, thatchers, bellfounders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life, one that is not yet … Continue reading Vanishing skills and traditions

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Photography celebrates its bicentenary in 2026

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Flashes of Brilliance is the story of the wildest experiments in early photography and the wild people who undertook them. Spare a thought when you take photos from an airplane window, or using a camera underwater, watch a movie or view an X-Ray. These inventions made such things possible were experimental revelatory, and sometimes dangerous- and many of the innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors behind them were memorable eccentrics. Did you know, the earliest photographers didn’t just take snaps in the studio, or did dull sepia plats of formal gardens, or took staged portraits, but they were detectives, baloonists, deep-sea divers.  … Continue reading Photography celebrates its bicentenary in 2026

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“DOWNTON ABBEY – THE GRAND FINALE”

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“DOWNTON ABBEY – THE GRAND FINALE” IN A CINEMA NEAR YOU – NOW!! 124 minutes, PG Director Richard Curtis Characterisation and careful storytelling spins us another enchanting  yarn in The latest Downton Saga! Plots, plot twists and sub plots feature in this movie, enchanting in the opulent lifestyles portrayed, and the banter and relationships between those above stairs and those below who all seem to get on famously, symbiotic  as their roles are in life in the 30s. It is now 15 years since Downton hit our screens with lots of spin offs and as it is so well loved, I hesitate … Continue reading “DOWNTON ABBEY – THE GRAND FINALE”

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Imperfect Memories: Shocking murder in the Kiwi bushes 

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A young girl, starving and covered with blood, turns up in a general store in a remote village deep in New Zealand. She blurts out her name- Anya – but refuses to say anyting else. A shocking murder in the New Zealand bush and the witness who looks all too familiar draws a woman back to the very place she swore she’d never return to in this breakneck debut thriller. The phone rings for Effie, a police officer who fled that very village under terrifying circumstances 17 years earlier and is now in Scotland. An old friend, Lewis, is on … Continue reading Imperfect Memories: Shocking murder in the Kiwi bushes 

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World of Organised Crime

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A bandit becomes a monarch, a gang becomes a government and organised crime at the heart of every modern state. Homo Criminalis shows the emergence of modern society through the evolution of the underworld and its crimes. From Chinese banditry and eighteenth-century English tea smuggling to today’s cocaine submarines and the high-tech crimes of tomorrow, showing how the world’s dark underbelly shapes us, no matter how we try to outpace it. Mark Galeotti, a prolific author specialising in Russia and organised crime, shows “our dynamic interconnected globalised networked cross-cultural world is so permeated by organised crime. It is very hard … Continue reading World of Organised Crime

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World of Organised Crime

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A bandit becomes a monarch, a gang becomes a government and organised crime at the heart of every modern state. Homo Criminalis shows the emergence of modern society through the evolution of the underworld and its crimes. From Chinese banditry and eighteenth-century English tea smuggling to today’s cocaine submarines and the high-tech crimes of tomorrow, showing how the world’s dark underbelly shapes us, no matter how we try to outpace it. Mark Galeotti, a prolific author specialising in Russia and organised crime, shows “our dynamic interconnected globalised networked cross-cultural world is so permeated by organised crime. It is very hard … Continue reading World of Organised Crime

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Marriage, love, betrayal, infidelity

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Roberta Green, a graduate student on the master of fine arts programme at the fictitious Edward University in upstate New York is presenting a searing thesis project about two married professors tiptoeing towards infidelity, as their transgressions are brought to light in Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian. The facts she is presenting pertain to the romantic lives of two of her tutors: a married couple named Simone and Ethan both in their early forties. Simone is the star of Edwards University’s creative writing department renowned Woolf scholar, grief memoirist, and campus sex icon. Her less glamorous and ostensibly devoted husband, … Continue reading Marriage, love, betrayal, infidelity

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Antics of Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie

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In Men in Love, action takes place over roughly, three years upto 1990, Welsh has to think himself into an era before smartphones and the internet. Late 1980s, the closing years of Thatcher’s Britain. For the Trainspotting crew, a new era is about to begin- a time for hope, for love, for raving. Leaving heroin behind and separated after a drug deal gone wrong, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie each want feel alive. They fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead; they follow the call of the dance floor, with its promise of joy … Continue reading Antics of Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie