Jottings - Fights of Fancy from our Betty by Liz Smith

No Comments Written by whizzbang on September 2, 2008 in books, newspaper DVD/CD/Offers.

You can pick up a copy of JOTTINGS by veteran actress Lizz Smith for £2.99 when you buy the Times newspaper from WHSmith this week.

It is a collection of stories that Liz has written over the years. Sometimes they explore the darker side of life and what may occur out of the public gaze: a rich and lonely housewife neglects her child and the nanny subjects her charge to unpleasant and adult scenes; a man’s wish for fame catapults him into prison and mistaken notoriety; an unhappy wife loses her only friend and is haunted by her.

Jottings

Other stories are more amusing: the sexy, man-eating woman who runs the mobile library: moving through the fog of 1950’s London with the help of a blind man; a scheming daughter who plans to take her mother’s money has a surprising comeuppance.

All in all Liz’s stories are unexpected, original and revealing of a writer who is fascinated by relationships and the barriers we erect between our public and private selves, and having seen some of her interviews I imagine this will be a great book.


The Times Alfred Hitchcock DVD Collection

No Comments Written by whizzbang on September 2, 2008 in newspaper DVD/CD/Offers.

From Sunday September 7th The Times Newspaper is doing a collection of Classic DVDs from the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock which runs until Saturday with DVDs being picked up each day when you buy the paper from WHSmith - This sounds like a fantastic offer - I’d like to get all of these as I am a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock films - So far I’ve got “The Birds” “Psycho” “Marnie” “North By Northwest” “Rear Window” & “Vertigo” so they should be a wonderful addition. The DVDs on offer in the series are:

Sunday - The 39 Steps [1935]
John Buchan’s classic novel gets the Hitchcock treatment. It features an innocent man named Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) who is forced to go on the run, along with A beautiful, icy blonde named Pamela (Madelaine Carroll) in order to uncover the mystery of The Thirty Nine Steps and clear his name, along the way he finds himself embroiled in a chaotic world in which no one is what they seem….

Monday - The Man Who Knew Too Much [1934]
Taut, twisting thriller in which a dying man reveals an assassination plot, a child is abducted,
and a man must choose between his family and his country…

Tuesday - Sabotage [1936]
An innocent boy (played by Desmond Tester) unwittingly delivers a bomb onto a bus that is
stuck in traffic, and a terrorist uses his business as a front for his subversive activities in this adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel “The Secret Agent”.

Wednesday - Secret Agent [1936]
This film is based on a W. Somerset Maugham spy story and features a novelist who has his death faked by British Intelligence, before embarking on a perilous and eccentric mission….

Thursday - Young and Innocent [1937]
A stylish thriller with a simple premise: a man finds the body of a young girl and runs to get help. Two young witnesses take him for the killer, and he faces a fight to prove his innocence…

Friday - Jamaica Inn [1939]
This Brilliant Hitchcock adaptation of a Classic Daphne Du Maurier tale is a superbly atmospheric tale of thieves and cutthroats set on the rugged Cornish coast. An orphan girl goes to live with her uncle, but discovers that he is the head of a gang of bloodthirsty wreckers.

Saturday - The Lady Vanishes [1938]
tale which takes place aboard a trans-continental express, where a young woman befriends an English governess who promptly disappears. Seeking an explanation, she is accused of hallucinating, but the more questions she asks, the deeper the mystery becomes…