Talk Media The Big Light

An action packed episode taking a look at the SNP/Scottish Government developments and the SNP leadership reporting.


At the end of the show a listener question from Ian Currie.


Recommendations:


Stuart:


Fragile Animals - book - Genevieve Jagger


When an ex-catholic woman develops a sexual relationship with a vampire, she is forced to confront the memories that haunt her religious past.


Struggling to deal with the familial trauma of her Catholic upbringing, hotel cleaner, Noelle, travels to the Isle of Bute. There, she meets a man who claims to be a vampire, and a relationship blooms between them based solely on confession. But as talk turns sacrilegious, and the weather outside grows colder, Noelle struggles to come to terms with her blasphemous sexuality. She becomes hounded by memories of her past: her mother’s affair with the local priest, and the part she played in ending it.


Catriona:


Night Train to Odesa - book - Jen Stout


When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, millions of lives changed in an instant. Millions of people were suddenly on the move. In this great flow of people was a reporter from Shetland. Jen Stout left Moscow abruptly, ending up on a border post in southeast Romania, from where she began to cover the human cost of Russian aggression. Her firsthand, vivid reporting as she travelled alone, hauling around body armour, brought the war to audiences back home, as she reported from front lines and cities across Ukraine. Stories from the night trains, birthday parties, military hospitals and bunkers: stories from the ground, from a writer with a deep sense of empathy, always seeking to understand the bigger picture, the big questions of identity, history, hopes and fears in this war in Europe.


Eamonn:


THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS - film 


In 1896, a construction engineer from the British Army, J.H. Patterson (Kilmer) is sent to build a railway bridge across Uganda's Tsavo River for the British East African Railway. Soon after he arrives, workmen begin to disappear at night from their tents never to be seen alive again.

At the end of the show a question from Roger Hyam


Recommendations:


Ruth


The Glasgow Girl (Paperback) - Aasmah Mir 


A Glasgow Girl is the coming of age story of Aasmah Mir's childhood growing up in 1970s Glasgow. From a vivacious child to a teenage loner, Aasmah candidly shares the highs and lows of growing up between two cultures - trying to fit in at school and retreating to the safe haven of a home inhabited by her precious but distant little brother and Helen, her family's Glaswegian guardian angel.


Intricately woven into this moving memoir is the story of Aasmah's mother, as we follow her own life as a young girl in 1950s Pakistan to 1960s Scotland and beyond. Both mother and daughter fight, are defeated and triumph in different battles in this sharp and moving story. A Glasgow Girl is a remarkable memoir about family, identity and finding yourself where you are.


This book was previously titled A Pebble in the Throat.


https://www.waterstones.com/book/a-glasgow-girl/aasmah-mir/9781472288554 


Blue Lights - series - BBC


For three police recruits in Belfast, the pressure is immense. Facing criminal gangs and divided communities, they don't know who to trust. The odds are, they won't all make it.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0f2cxpr/blue-lights 


Hollyrood Sources Podcast


The Holyrood Sources podcast analyses Scottish politics through the experiences of those who have lived and breathed it as Special Advisers to the Scottish Government, SNP and opposition parties. Join hosts Calum Macdonald, Geoff Aberdein (Chief of Staff to the First Minister, 2007-2014) and Andy Maciver (Former Head of Communications for the Scottish Conservatives). Their insight is second to none - they've been there. What does Scottish Politics look like after Nicola Sturgeon? Holyrood Sources bring you the insider information you need to navigate the next chapter.


https://holyroodsources.com/ 


Stuart


When a struggling comedian shows one act of kindness to a vulnerable woman, it sparks a suffocating obsession which threatens to wreck both their lives


https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81219887 


Eamonn


Living - film - netflix


Overwhelmed at work and lonely at home, a council bureaucrat's life takes a heartbreaking turn when a medical diagnosis tells him his time is short. Influenced by a local decadent and a vibrant woman, he continues to search for meaning until a simple revelation gives him a purpose to create a legacy for the next generation.


https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9051908/ 

At the end of the show a question from John Daly.


Recommendations:


Stuart 


Riley - Netflix


Scott’s Tom Ripley is a grifter scraping by in early ’60s New York. He’s hired by a wealthy industrialist to travel to Italy to try to convince the man’s dilettante son, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), to return home. Accepting the job is Tom’s first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud, and murder.  


https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81678765  


Eamonn


imagine... Pet Shop Boys: Then and Now - BBC


Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are the most successful duo in UK Music history. They have sold more than 50 million records, produced over 40 Top 40 singles, four UK number ones, performed in several world tours, and they are still making new music together.


Their songs have often commented on Britain and the world around them with wit, sensitivity and intelligence driving the stories they want to share through some of the most memorable synth-pop music ever created. For their tours they have worked with the most innovative theatre personnel to create original and thrilling performances. Now for the first time they have allowed backstage access as imagine… accompanies them on their global Dreamworld tour, filming rehearsals in London and backstage in Helsinki. Contributors include fellow musicians Brandon Flowers, Jake Shears, Olly Alexander, Marc Almond; music journalist Miranda Sawyer, and creative collaborators Stuart Price, James Ford, Es Devlin, Javier De Frutos, Tom Scutt and Mark Farrow.


https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/proginfo/2024/16/imagine-pet-shop-boys 


David


The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of Gaza and the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappé 


A powerful, groundbreaking history of the Occupied Territories from one of Israel's most influential historians


From the author of the bestselling study of the 1948 War of Independence comes an incisive look at the Occupied Territories, picking up the story where The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine left off.


In this comprehensive exploration of one of the world’s most prolonged and tragic conflicts, Pappe uses recently declassified archival material to analyse the motivations and strategies of the generals and politicians – and the decision-making process itself – that laid the foundation of the occupation. From a survey of the legal and bureaucratic infrastructures that were put in place to control the population of over one million Palestinians, to the security mechanisms that vigorously enforced that control, Pappe paints a picture of what is to all intents and purposes the world’s largest ‘open prison’.


https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-biggest-prison-on-earth/ilan-pappe/9781786073419 


Strangers in the House - Raja Shehadeh 


Raja Shehadeh was born into a successful Palestinian family with a beautiful house overlooking the Mediterranean. When the state of Israel was formed in 1948 the family were driven out to the provincial town of Ramallah. There Shehadeh grew up in the shadow of his father, a leading civil rights lawyer. He vowed not to become involved in politics or law but inevitably did so and became an important activist himself.


In 1985 his father was stabbed to death. The Israeli police failed to investigate the murder properly and Shehadeh, by then a lawyer, set about solving the crime that destroyed his family. In Strangers in the House, Shehadeh recounts his troubled and complex relationship with his father and his experience of exile - of being a stranger in his own land. It is a remarkable memoir that combines the personal and political to devastating effect.


https://www.waterstones.com/book/strangers-in-the-house/raja-shehadeh/9781846682506 

After two weeks with the brilliant Catriona Stewart and Shona Craven, the Boys are Back In Town!


At the end of the show a question from J.P. Gallacher


Recommendations:


Stuart:


Bobby Fischer Goes to War: The most famous chess match of all time - Dave Edmonds


Bobby Fischer Goes to War by David Edmonds and John Eidinow details the occasion when Bobby Fischer met Boris Spassky in one of the most thrilling and politically charged chess matches of all time.


For decades, the USSR had dominated world chess. Evidence, according to Moscow, of the superiority of the Soviet system. But in 1972 along came the American, Bobby Fischer: insolent, arrogant, abusive, vain, greedy, vulgar, bigoted, paranoid and obsessive - and apparently unstoppable.


Against him was Boris Spassky: complex, sensitive, the most un-Soviet of champions. As the authors reveal, when Spassky began to lose, the KGB decided to step in. . .


https://www.waterstones.com/book/bobby-fischer-goes-to-war/david-edmonds/john-eidinow/9780571214129 


Eamonn:


Scoop - Netflix


Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatization gives an insider account of how the women of Newsnight secured Prince Andrew's infamous interview.


https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81600418 


The Boys in the Boat - MGM


The Boys in the Boat is a sports drama based on the #1 New York Times bestselling non-fiction book written by Daniel James Brown. The film, directed by George Clooney, is about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team that competed for gold at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. This inspirational true story follows a group of underdogs at the height of the Great Depression as they are thrust into the spotlight and take on elite rivals from around the world.


https://www.mgm.com/movies/the-boys-in-the-boat 


Paddy:


Girls5eva - Netflix


A one-hit wonder '90s girl group attempts a comeback while hilariously navigating family and relationships — plus the joys and pains of middle age.


https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81630704 


Round Britain Quiz - Radio 4


Radio's most fiendish quiz, with cryptic questions drawing on unpredictable fields of knowledge


https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qxpr 

This week, with Stuart and Eamonn on holiday, we have a wee treat in store - a girl power double header with Talk Media favourites Catriona Stewart and Shona Craven.


At the end of the show a listener question suggested by Brian Brussels.


Recommendations:


Shona


Invisible Child - Book - Andrea Elliot


Based on nearly a decade of reporting, Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolise Brooklyn's gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani moves with her family from shelter to shelter, this story traces the passage of Dasani's ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north.


Dasani comes of age as New York City's homeless crisis is exploding. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani leads her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system.


When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?


By turns heartbreaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequality.


https://www.waterstones.com/book/invisible-child/andrea-elliott/9781529156102


Catriona:


American Fiction - Film - Cord Jefferson


AMERICAN FICTION is Cord Jefferson's hilarious directorial debut, which confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes. Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.


https://www.mgm.com/movies/american-fiction


Glasgow School of Art fire - Features - The Herald






Almost a decade has passed since the unique and world-renowned Mackintosh Building at Glasgow School of Art was badly damaged in a fire as final year students prepared for their degree show. 


Four years later, the category A-listed landmark - widely regarded as Charles Rennie Mackintosh's masterpiece - suffered a second, more significant fire as it was nearing the end of a £35 million restoration effort to repair the damage incurred during the 2014 fire.


https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24199850.complete-timeline-glasgow-school-art-fires/

This week, the boys are really happy to have the company of Chris Mullin - journalist responsible for exposing the false convictions of the Birmingham Six , author and ex-labour MP. 


At the end a question from Jim Hunter.


Recommendations:


Chris Mullin Books:


Error of Judgement,


Didn’t You Used to be Chris Mullin,


A Very British Coup,


Secret State and


Walk on Part


and Many More…


https://www.waterstones.com/author/chris-mullin/77471


Film:


The Investigation Inside a Terrorist Bombing 1990 Martin Shaw John Hurt


www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAvevePIp4c Stuart:


Now Then: A Biography of Yorkshire by Rick Broadbent


Written from the perspective of an exiled Yorkshireman this bestselling, award-winning author returns to his native county to discover and reveal its soul.


We all know the tropes - Geoffrey Boycott incarnate, ferret-leggers and folk singers gambolling about Ilkley Moor without appropriate headgear - but why is Yorkshire God's Own County?


Exiled Yorkshireman Rick Broadbent sets out to find out whether Yorkshireness is something that can be summed up and whether it even matters in a shrinking world. Along the way he meets rock stars, ramblers and rhubarb growers as he searches for answers and a decent cup of tea.


Now Then is a biographical mosaic of a place that has been victimised and stereotyped since the days of William the Conqueror. Incorporating social history, memoir and author interviews, Now Then is not a hagiography. Broadbent visits the scenes of industrial neglect and forgotten tragedy, as well as examining the truth about well-known Yorkshire figures and institutions. Featuring Kes, the Sheffield Outrages and the most controversial poem ever written, as well as a heroic dog, a lost albatross and a stuffed crocodile, Now Then is an affectionate but unsparing look at a county, its inhabitants and their flinty vowels.


This is a funny, wise and searching account of a place that claims to have given the world its first football club and England its last witch-burning. It does include cobbles, trumpets and stiff-necked, wilful obstinacy, but it is also about ordinary Yorkshire and its extraordinary lives.


https://www.waterstones.com/book/now-then/rick-broadbent/9781838957360


Eamonn:


Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell


Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it.


Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, chronicled in Homage to Catalonia. Here he brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion and clarity, describing with bitter intensity the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic episode: the revolutionary euphoria of Barcelona, the courage of ordinary Spanish men and women he fought alongside, the terror and confusion of the front, his near-fatal bullet wound and the vicious treachery of his supposed allies.


A firsthand account of the brutal conditions of the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia includes an introduction by Julian Symons in Penguin Modern Classics.


https://www.waterstones.com/book/homage-to-catalonia/george-orwell/julian-symon/9780141183053


Chris Mullin:


How they broke Britain by James O’Brien


Something has gone really wrong in Britain.


Bold and incisive as ever, James O'Brien reveals the shady network of influence that has created a broken Britain of strikes, shortages and scandals. He maps the web connecting dark think tanks to Downing Street, the journalists involved in selling it to the public and the media bosses pushing their own agendas. Over ten chapters, each focusing on a particular person complicit in the downfall, James O'Brien reveals how a select few have conspired - sometimes by incompetence, sometimes by design - to bring Britain to its knees.


https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-they-broke-britain/james-obri