Brian K. Vaughan

Advantages: Great monthly read
Disadvantages: How long can they keep it going?

...from many disciplines - Tom Stoppard, the Coen Brothers, Frank Miller, Terry Wogan, Vikram Seth, JJ Abrams. Then we have Brian K Vaughn a jobbing freelance writer who was given the opportunity to write his own monthly comic and ran with it. It's the oldest adolescent fantasy imaginable. What if you were the last man in the world. All the chicks would have to really dig you then. Y: The Last Man tells the story of one man, Yorick Brown (Y... geddit) and his monkey as the only male survivors of a planet-wide catastrophe that killed everything other living thing with a Y chromosome (again with the Y, do you see what they did there?). The first chapter of this multi-part adventure concludes with some chilling statistics about the proportion of government ministers, prison inmates, airline pilots and soldiers wiped out in a heartbeat... Read review

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Advantages: A chilling horror story with a twist in the tale...
Disadvantages: Not for the faint-hearted reader...there's blood and gore y'know...

...– and it is to the son of the woman that we will discover he had an obsessive affair with that he chooses to relay it. Played out in the formaldehyde stench of a 1930’s hospital, Haggard, the seriously exhausted young doctor, is under the tutelage of Vincent Cushing, a renowned surgeon, and the ominous (and also formaldehyde-smelling) pathologist Ratcliff Vaughan. It is the beautiful and lonely wife of Vaughan who is to take centre stage in the dreams and desires of the young Haggard and all too quickly their affair is being played out with all the poise and 1930s panache one would expect from a Bette Davis movie. The narrative is finely controlled and the sentence structure is cuttingly short as the foreboding in the mind of the reader increases. We are reminded of the name of the novel half way through the book: is the disease that of the British... Read review

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Advantages: True to a fantastic story, excellent actors, great music
Disadvantages: Finding time to listen, might surprise those who only know the film

...was growing up) Frodo – Ian Holm (he played Bilbo in the films, but I remember from Chariots of Fire) Aragorn - Robert Stephen (a stalwart of the Royal Shakespeare company) Bilbo – John le Mesurier (Sergeant Wilson from Dad’s Army) Sam – Bill Nighy (Love Actually) Celeborn – Simon Cadell (Hi-de-hi!) Denethor – Peter Vaughan (Genial Harry Grout from Porridge) Butterbur – James Grout (Morse’s boss, Chief Superintendent Strange) But for me the star is Gollum, played by Peter Woodthorpe (Max the pathologist from Morse). While Andy Serkis received deserved plaudits for his Gollum in the film, some of that is due to the CGI. Woodthorpe however conveys all the twisted emotions with nothing other than his voice. iii) The faithfulness to the books is paramount. I have repeated read the books (and in more than one language), so it is a joy to see... Read review

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