Philip Spires commonplace book

I have kept a commonplace book for many years. It's a place where scraps of impressions are filed for future reflection. It's not a diary, it's just a mental scrapbook, concentrating on book reviews, concert reviews, visual arts and some occasional pieces on travel. It is also a place where I occasionally reflect on what I write. Details of my books can be found at http://www.philipspires.co.uk

Monday, August 27, 2007

A reflection on Saville by David Storey

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Saville won the Booker Prize in 1976. In such a vast novel it is inevitable that the pace will occasionally quicken and slacken, but a book ...

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Recent reading - Swift, le Carre, Dawkins, Baverstock

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A few books….. Marketing Your Book: An Author’s Guide – Alison Baverstock It stated the obvious, but I suppose most of these books do. R...

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Saturday, August 11, 2007

A Culture of Benidorm

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Sunday morning choir at the harbour Mention Benidorm and with it, by implication, the concepts of package tourism, hotel buffets, British ba...

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Something of a disappointment - Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Something of a disappointment It is not often that a novel comes to hand that has been prized, praised and pre-inflated. Half of a Yellow Su...

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Advice to aspiring writers. A speech at the awards ceremony for the Libros International Children’s Writing Competition. 20 July 2007

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Like the students who entered this competition, I started writing when I was quite young. I wrote a lot of poetry in my early teens. I wrote...

Sunday, July 15, 2007

An orchestral concert 14 July 2007, Festival – Nits de la Mediterrania, La Nucia - Twentieth Century Ballets

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The final concert of the inaugural La Nucia arts festival took place last night. Starting at 10:30pm, it was staged in the town’s recently c...

Saturday, July 14, 2007

A review of Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

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George Edalji (that’s Ay-dal-ji, by the way, since Parsee names are always stressed on the first syllable) is the son of a Staffordshire vic...

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About Me

philipspires: I was born in Wakefield and was brought up in Sharslton, a mining Village. I went to London University and then became a maths teacher, working initially as a volunteer teacher in Kenya. I spent sixteen years in London, in Balham and Islington. In 1992, I left Britain for Brunei and then Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. I currently live in La Nucia, near Benidorm in Spain. I am interested in the relationship between nature and nurture, birthright and experience. Themes of culture and identity and their relation to economic and social roles underpin my writing. What we are born into relates to what we become, but we are rarely in control. What others do, our interests and intellects and the way we choose to earn a living, all of these shape us into what we become. It may be that culture is the sum of all assumptions that others make on our behalf, whereas identity represents our reactions to them. I did a PhD on the effects of education in economic development in the Philippines. I was President of Alfas del Pi Music Society for twelve years.

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