The Last of the Perivales

I'm delighted to report that my story 'The Last of the Perivales' has been accepted for inclusion in Flame Tree Publishing's forthcoming 'Bodies in the Library'Anthology.

This will be my fifth story accepted by Flame Tree, who will now take the lead in the informal "Let's publish as much work by Philip Brian Hall as we can!" competition.

For those who have enjoyed the previous scientific and supernatural investigations of my Victorian sleuths Sergeant MacAndrew and Constable Smithers, this is the fourth story, though it may or may not be out before the third, which has been accepted by Curiosities but for which I don't yet have a publication date.

This time the Old Red Fox of Scotland Yard attempts to solve the case of a corpse in 17th century Restoration attire, found murdered in the library of a London gentlemen's club in the 1860s.

Naturally, nothing is what it seems and nothing is ever simple in MacAndrew's world!

My first story in Galaxy's Edge: Cadmus P. I.

I'm delighted to record my first story to make the prestigious pages of Galaxy's Edge. 

Cadmus P.I. tells the story of the man who may very well have been the Ancient World's very first private detective as he sets out to trace a kidnap victim.

Strangely enough, this story began life as an informal competition between fellow competitors in Writers of the Future to write a story in a weekend featuring three random objects.

My three objects, if I remember correctly, were a dragon soft toy, a miniature portrait and a bag of rubbish.

I shall leave it to the reader to decide whether I made a good job. If you think I did, then thanks must go to Rebecca Birch for thinking up the competition.

If you think I didn't - well, you don't have to tell me, do you? I'm just so pleased to have reached one of my long term writing goals.

I was not to know at the time that this was also to be one of the last stories selected by the celebrated Mike Resnick, whose role in helping other authors make career progress cannot be overstated.

Labour's Proposal to Abolish Private Schooling in the UK

I was born poor, but smart. I was lucky. I was educated in a grammar school. I won a scholarship to Oxford. Two scholarships actually, since I won a commercial one as well as the college one.

After ill health obliged me to leave the Diplomatic Service I ended up as a teacher, first in state schools, then in a private school. I took this last job because I needed the money, but I soon discovered I had little chance of returning to the state system, since my qualifications had been negated by my willingness to take a job in the private sector.

The prejudice I encountered in the employment market is the same that fuels this policy of state monopoly. It is a policy that has already destroyed the ladder I climbed and would like to tear down alternative ladders as well.

The children in private schools are children. They are lucky children, as I was, but they are still children. They are not suitable for use as political footballs.

In my judgement, we should not be asking ‘Why should some children have good education and not others?’. We should be asking ‘Why should not all children have good education?’

Sheffield Wednesday 0: Manchester City 1 (FA Cup 5th Round 2020)

I'm pretty old. I remember some real glory days and wonderful Wednesday teams. And if we were still the force we once were in English football we would, of course, have played a completely different game to the one we played last night.

But at the end of this game, I felt proud of being a Sheffield Wednesday supporter again. Here’s our team on a desperate run of form, shipping goals against weak opponents as though defence had gone out of fashion. And along comes one of the world’s best teams, turning out pretty much a full strength side that has, this season, put 8 past Watford, 6 past Villa and 5 past West Ham. Plus they’ve done the double over Sheffield United this season. Plus they’d scored 4 in each of the previous Cup rounds. On Owlstalk, a supporters' forum, I’m reading predictions of double figure disasters.

And we witness a team performance in which absolutely every one of our players ran his guts out and gave it his best shot.

Look, no-one can do better than their best, whatever level that happens to be. If we had a world-beating team today we wouldn’t be half-way down the Championship. But on occasions a whole team can lift each other to something way beyond what we thought was possible.

Was it perfect? Of course not. Did everyone play like Messi? Of course not. But was there anyone out there not playing as hard as he was able for the honour of Sheffield Wednesday? Absolutely not.

It makes me sad today that such negative suggestions are even being made, let alone insisted upon.

There are many, many criticisms that can be made these days about Wednesday. I respectfully suggest that last night’s efforts did not deserve to be included among them.