John Baker’s Blog

For St Patrick’s Day MA Peel mused:
I met a psychiatrist once who believed that the national Irish affinity for drinking was a product of centuries of oppression/emasculation by the British.
The post goes on to review the film Kings from Tom Collins, and the play The Seafarer, by Conor McPherson
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When The Cat Kin didn’t sell enough [...]

A small, closed-to-the-public library at a prison in Münster, in west-central Germany, has received the 30,000 euro national Library of the Year award.
The popularity of the library is reflected in the numbers who visit it. Of around 530 prisoners, about 80 percent use the library. But no one can say what kind of prisoner becomes [...]