John Baker’s Blog

The Los Angeles Times have published an adaptation from Amos Oz’s acceptance speech in Spain last week for the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature.
I believe in literature as a bridge between peoples. I believe curiosity can be a moral quality. I believe imagining the other can be an antidote to fanaticism. Imagining the other [...]

Mario Balzic is the Police Chief of Rocksburg, a town in Pennsylvania where the mills have closed and the mines shut down. In this 1974 novel, as in other novels in the series, the Chief lives with his wife Ruth, their two daughters, and Balzic’s elderly mother.
It had taken years for the hedges to [...]

The Taster:
Billy was on the point of drifting off to sleep when a single sentence drew him right in close.
‘But that day for some reason, I was all alone . . .’
Billy roused himself. ‘Sorry. Where was this?’
‘In Manchester. A place called Fallowfield.’
A white car pulled alongside him, Trevor said, as he was walking. The [...]