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Showing posts from January, 2012

The Jam: Made In Britain

BBC 6 Music’s documentary The Jam: Made in Britain tells the story pretty much as you’d expect. You could do without some of the celeb contributions – yeah, we know Noel … without The Jam, no Smiths; without the Smiths, no Roses … etc. Jonathon Ross’s rent-a-links tend to grate, but the band themselves contribute fully and there are interesting insights, particularly from Weller and Vic Coppersmith-Heaven, who produced the band through that astonishing run of singles and albums that took them from post-punk outcasts to (nod to the late John Weller) ‘The best fucking band in the world’. I’m a sucker for a well put together music doc, even if the story is one that’s well told and a bit frayed at the edges. What makes it worthwhile, and this is no exception, is that odd flash of detail or insight that opens up or illuminates the music in a new way. Weller’s lack of confidence in his own writing during the recording of All Mod Cons is remarkable: he wanted to bin Down In A Tubestation

Book News Update: Frank's Wild Years

You wait a month for a blogpost and then land two in 24 hours. This one's an update, an informerical, a do-list, a coming soon, and just to keep in the mix a 'note-to-self' that we are just short of two months from the off. Frank's Wild Years  is published on 19th March .  To go alongside what appears to be a busy spring for Brit crime publishers Caffeine Nights - quite simply the hippest indie on the block - comes a serious update for the website and it's right... Here . (If the screen moves a bit sharpish, there's a pause button at the foot of the page.) Having booked in a spring and summer tour of northern Waterstones, starting with a launch evening and reading at Sheffield branch on 21st March , I'll be filling in the gaps over the next few weeks. Heading south, London bound. So if anyone knows of any bookshops, potential readings, reader groups, arts festivals, book clubs, whist drives, or any other Polly Cox's party that might fancy a reading

How the Humber Changed Our World

On BBC East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire at 3.05pm, Sunday afternoon, 15 January – and hopefully on the BBC iplayer afterwards – a new programme charts the influence of the mighty Humber on the region and Britain’s industrial heritage. Through tragedy, adventure and hardship, How the Humber Changed Our World brings memories of local people to light. It looks at how the Humber ports and the fishing industry defined the lives of generations of families on both sides of the river. The production team contacted us last year as we went to press on Distant Water and we were pleased to point them in the direction of some of the people we'd spoken to for our heritage projects. I’ll be joining BBC Radio Humberside at Grimsby’s Fishing Heritage Centre on Monday morning from 9am as part of a follow-up discussion to talk about the programme, the docks, the river, the fishing industry and what the future might hold. I may also slip in a plug for The Women They Left Behind and Distant W