Something that I have noticed with alarming frequency is the amount of ‘news’ that just simply isn’t true. This phenomenon appeared years ago in wake of hugely significant events – The 2016 election of Donald Trump and the 2016 Brexit vote – and, following the immense fallouts for both, has remained in the public sphere ever since. During my time at Brookes as a Publishing student I have only been made more aware of its presence and proliferation and have come to a disturbing realisation – that it is everywhere. Fact and fiction have blurred, giving way to ‘alternative facts’ and what appears to be an overall subjectification of the truth. Although normally disguised as legitimate media, or disturbingly, concealed by ‘legitimate’ media companies, fake news has risen to the surface once again in the wake of this global pandemic. Just three days ago, The Washing Post, Brietbart and Townhall, amongst others, reported that CBS had taken medical staff away from their duties at a Medical Center in Michigan and had them pose as patients in their coverage, so as to make circumstances appear dire. This followed a previous incident where the same network CBS used footage from an overwhelmed Italian hospital in a report about New York City Hospitals.

I read with a mixture of abject horror and wry amusement that Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley, is about to have an old novel of his re-published. According to The Guardian he originally wrote said novel in 1982. It was written about an imagined viral pandemic. It featured an epidemiologist as the hero and a green monkey, thought to be the animal vector for the virus. The novel was entitled “Marburg”, after the real-life Marburg virus that was the cause of a large outbreak of the disease in Marburg, Germany in 1967. Though the animal reservoir, like Covid 19, is bats, the virus was spread from laboratory workers who were handling African Green monkeys, who had caught the virus from bats!

The government is always harping on about the North South Divide and how their policies will seek to reverse this trend. BUPA, The BBC, the GMC, amongst others, have moved from London to Manchester. Leeds has become the second biggest financial centre in England, after London.HS2, assuming it goes ahead now, will, eventually, connect Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and other northern cities to each other, as well as to the London metropolis.

Although there appears to be an overall lack of positivity and optimism in this blog, the unfortunate disruption of the dreaded Coronavirus has now hit the publishing industry, and as such I feel compelled to write about it.

A few weeks before Lockdown I spent a day wandering around what might be considered the literary and publishing epicentre of London. I took the train to St Pancras and the Metropolitan line tube to Great Portland Street, as I was meeting a friend for a few beers at The Fitzroy Tavern. The pub was a favourite of literary types in the nineteen fifties when the likes of Dylan Thomas with his wife Caitlin would regularly imbibe there. Rumour has it that he left an early draft of Under Milkwood there after a particularly heavy session! This area of London is known as Fitzrovia in allusion to its Bohemian past. After drinks with my friend, I wandered eastwards. I passed through some of London’s loveliest, leafiest squares. First up was Bedford square, where Ian McEwan once lived ( he lived in Oxford prior to that ), and where he set his novel Saturday. I crossed Tottenham Court Road and meandered down University Street toward UCL and the part of London known as Bloomsbury. I ambled along Gower Street, noting a blue plaque to The Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood. I passed the lovely Waterstones bookshop and on towards Gordon Square, where Virginia Woolf once lived.

Thank goodness that Covid 19 happened in Spring, rather than autumn or, even worse, in the depths of a cold, dark winter. Since “ Lockdown” the sun has shone (mostly, at least), so exercising and staying fit and healthy has been relatively easy. I’ve cycled and walked many of the lanes around St Albans; my home town. The other day was another where the sun shone in an azure, cloudless sky. So, my Dad and I went out for a walk in the park. Amongst other things the conversation came around to whether bookshops would survive Lockdown, a topic I had previously dealt with in this very blog. Would e-books and Amazon deliveries have convinced people to use kindles and shop online for their books?

The Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz wishes he only had a heart; And that is Ellis’ problem too. Ellis has reached middle age and has finally decided it’s time to live his own life rather than the one that his father and society expect from him. He is grieving after the death of his wife, Annie and best friend, Michael five years ago. “ I’m stuck”, He tells the ghost of his wife. “Go and find him” is her reply.

I was really pleased to learn that Eimear McBride had won the Bailey’s prize for Fiction for her Joycean tale, “ A Girl is a Half Formed Thing.”A stream of conciousness, visceral and disturbing tale of a young woman and her chaotic and exploitative sexual awakening. I was sitting in the Erpingham Arms, not too far from Norwich, where The Galley Beggar Press publishing house had produced this amazingly original novel, after just about everyone else had turned it down!

With many of the posts so far having been somewhat pessimistic in nature, this week I have decided to discuss one of the redeeming movements within the publishing industry; The growth of the e-book. Despite the falling sales in just about every area of publishing, e-books are for so many providing the necessary income needed for them to stay writing and for authorship, particularly when self-publishing, to remain commercially viable.

For many years I have wrestled with the ever-increasing speed at which the internet and its associated technologies have pervaded almost every corner of life, weaving into the fabric of normality with disturbing momentum. Although a child of the late 90’s and to many an undoubtedly fitting representative of the Millennial conglomerate, I have always found myself naturally drawn away from the cerulean lights of an LCD, CRT or OLED. Early years were invariably occupied with stories from the collection of novels shelved around the house, with the possibility of a feature length film reserved to something of a special occasion.