electricarticles.com

Search for:

in

    Author Bio for Philip Spires

Philip Spires
Author of Mission, an African novel set in Kenya
http://www.philipspires.co.uk
Michael, a missionary priest, has just killed Munyasya. It was an accident, but Mulonzya, a politician, exploits the tragedy for his own ends. Boniface, a church worker, has just lost his child. He did not make it to the hospital in time, possibly because Michael went to the Mission to retrieve a letter from Janet, a teacher, and the priest’s neighbour. It is Munyasya who has the last laugh, however.

 

 Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa - Category: Business - Writing and Speaking 7/6/2008
Summary: Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is a surreal novel by Peruvian author, Mario Vargas Llosa. In the book, the writer manages to blur distinctions between reality and fiction, between fact and invention, between truth and fiction. It is a book where life becomes a sitcom, where experience becomes plot and where characters come to terms with their lives. . . . more

 Cultured Tangos - Category: Arts - Music 7/6/2008
Summary: Cultured Tangos examines aspects of the music of Argentine composer, Astor Piazzolla. The piece was inspired by a performance of Piazzolla tangos by Joachin Palomares, Claude Delangle and Camerata Virtuosi in the Auditori de la Mediterraneo in a Nucia, Spain. . . . more

 July’s People by Nadine Gordimer - Category: Business - Writing and Speaking 7/6/2008
Summary: July's People by Nadine Gordimer examines relations between the black and white races of apartheid South Africa after an urban rebellion has rendered the country ungovernable. A white family's former houseboy offers his employers safe haven and they must learn a new way of living. . . . more

 Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene - Category: Business - Writing and Speaking 7/6/2008
Summary: Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene is a masterpiece of twentieth century fiction. Its simplicty of style on contruction provide a framework for a truly complex and surprising plot in which the powerfully drawn characters live out war, peace, dictatorship and fascism. And also, their lives chage as personal contacts reinvent a man's identity. . . . more

 Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai - Category: Business - Writing and Speaking 7/6/2008
Summary: Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai is a surprising book. Set in India and the USA, the lives middle class families are unpicked, especially in relation to the status of women. Opposites are thus shown to be similar, and an apparently gentle domestic tale becomes tragic. . . . more

 Ashes To The Vistula by Bill Copeland - Category: Business - Writing and Speaking 7/6/2008
Summary: Ashes To The Vistula by Bill Copeland is a World War Two novel set in Auschwitz. It's a tale of loyalty amidst the confusion and destruction of war, a loyalty that must pass its untimate test in a surprising, moving way. . . . more

 Rufus And The Biggest Diamond In The World by Michael Elsmere - Category: Business - Writing and Speaking 7/6/2008
Summary: In Rufus And The Biggest Diamond In The World two boys seek and find treasure in an imagined journey to Solomon's mines and new worlds, where birds talk and words come to life. . . . more

 Unless by Carol Shields - Category: Business - Writing and Speaking 2/29/2008
Summary: In Unless Carol Shields presents a response to a family crisis. A duaghter has dropped out and has suffered some sort of breakdown. Her mother, a writer, tries tor ationalise events which, eventually, are revealed as quite random. . . . more

 Sukarno, A Political Biography by J. D. Legge: nationalism revisited. - Category: Society - Politics 2/29/2008
Summary: Sukarno by J D Legge is a biography of the former Indonesian president. In the book, the author examines Sukarno's contribution to twentieth century history. This article reviews the book and examines the use of nationalism as a political idea. . . . more

 The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin - Category: Business - Writing and Speaking 2/29/2008
Summary: The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin is an Irish novel set in Dublin and Wexford. Eamon Redmond is a high court judge with political connections and a family history. The book tells his story and describes the conflicts generated by his legal judgments with deep compassion. . . . more

 Emperor by Colin Thubron - Category: Business - Writing and Speaking 2/29/2008
Summary: Colin Thubron's Emperor is a highly original attempt to fill in via fiction a significant gap in Eurpean history. Constantine the Great's conversion to Christianity elevated the religion to official and imperial status, a position it has never lost. Colin Thubron's book flutters through the ciscumstances of that conversion. . . . more

 Willie The Actor by David Barry - Category: Business - Writing and Speaking 2/29/2008
Summary: When Willie the Actor was asked why he robbed banks, his answer was "because that's where the money is." David Barry's book is a fictional biography of the famous bank robber, a figure who is portrayed as both enigmatic and strangely sensitive. . . . more

 The Colonel’s Last Wicket by G V Rama Rao - Category: Business - Writing and Speaking 2/29/2008
Summary: The Colonel's Last Wicket by G V Rama Rao is an optimistic novel about human relationships in India seen through a filter of cricket. A retired army officer resolves to develop the bowling talent of a young orphan, a task that demands love, devotion and perseverance. . . . more

 Symphony No.7 Op.60 Dmitri Shostakovich - The Leningrad Symphony – a personal interpretation - Category: Arts - Music 2/7/2008
Summary: The Seventh Symphony of Shostakovich has been interpreted in a number of ways. Here Philip Spires argues that the work makes most sense when it is understood as a conflict between ideologies and idealism. . . . more

 Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler - Category: Arts - Writers Resources 2/7/2008
Summary: Breathing Lessons won a Pultizer prize for fiction for its author, Anne Tyler. In the novel she describes a fairly typical outing and homecopming for some fairly typical Balimore folk. The lives described, however, are anything from placid. . . . more

 Shakespeare by Bill Bryson - Category: Arts - Writers Resources 2/7/2008
Summary: In Shakespeare, Bill Bryson has accomplished a great feat - the publication of a short, succinct, highly entertaining and informative work on the greatest writer of all time. . . . more

 Life At The Top by John Braine - Category: Arts - Writers Resources 2/7/2008
Summary: It is over forty years since John Braine published Life At The Top, a novel that presents a stark, perhaps cynical view of the British class system. Its frank portrayal of relationships and sex caused a stir at the time. Fifty years later, it is still poignant, and it also reminds us that some things have changed a lot, though not the British class system. . . . more

 The Mission Song by John le Carré - Category: Arts - Writers Resources 2/7/2008
Summary: In The Mission Song John le Carre examines the establishment of a deal that will hopefully bring stability to an area of central Africa. It will also create profit for a selection of its sponsors, a situation not appreciated by everyone involved. . . . more

 A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini - Category: Arts - Writers Resources 1/28/2008
Summary: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini continues the author's depiction of Afghanistan's recent history via the experiences of powerless individuals caught up in the tagedy. In this book he charts the lives of two very different women, Mariam and Laila, whose divergent lives intersect for a while. . . . more

 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - Category: Arts - Writers Resources 1/28/2008
Summary: Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini has been showered with priase and attention since it publication. The book deals with Afghanis experience of the turmaoils that have beset their country in recent decades, and this is seen through the lives of a pair of friends who grew up together. It is a deeply moving book. . . . more

 In our grasp - how the interent and new technology will democratise publishing. - Category: Computers - Internet 1/6/2008
Summary: For a century Wider access to education has changed the world, opening up the possiblility of participating in human intellectual life for millions of people who otherwise would have merely repeated the ways of the past. Now the internet, new technology and the vision of a few far sighted individuals is opening up access to publishing and promises a flowering as great for future generations. . . . more

 On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan - Category: Society - Relationships 1/3/2008
Summary: On Chesil Beach examines attitudes towards sexuality and realtionships at the start of the 1960s. By the end of the decade both of these ideas were described as liberated. Just a few years earlier, people were still very much the children of their age. . . . more

 The Statement by Brian Moore - Category: Arts - Writers Resources 1/3/2008
Summary: In The Statement Brian Moore's main character is pursued by a Jewish group wanting to avenge a wartime massacre. The book presents a good read alongside many missed opportunities. . . . more

 A review of A Room At The Top by John Braine - Category: Society - People 1/3/2008
Summary: It is fifty years since John Braine published Room At The Top, a novel that presents a stark, perhaps cynical view of the British class system. Its frank portrayal of relationships and sex caused a stir at the time. Fifty years later, it is still poignant, and it also reminds us that some things have changed a lot, though not the British class system. . . . more

 A review of The Gathering by Anne Enright - Category: Arts - Writers Resources 12/7/2007
Summary: The Gathering by Anne Enright has recently won the Booker prize for fiction. It's a novel that deals with private grief, privately, where strong emotions cannot be completely expressed, and where there always has to be someone or something to blame. . . . more

 A review of A S Byatt’s A Whistling Woman - Category: Arts - Writers Resources 12/7/2007
Summary: A S Byatt’s A Whistling Woman is a strange book. At one level it’s a straightforward account of university life, with its politics, affairs and academic pursuit. But then there’s the suspicion that none of this is ever satisfying for those involved. They yearn for something bigger. . . . more

 A review of The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble - Category: Arts - Writers Resources 12/7/2007
Summary: In Waterfall maragaret Drabble examines marriage and relationships. The novel's principle character, Jane, is intensely analytical, and extrudes every aspect of her own psyche in every direction possible through the needle-eye of existence. . . . more

 A Bucket of Ashes, a romantic novel set in Britain and Nigeria, by Jill Lanchbery is published by Libros International. - Category: Society - Relationships 12/4/2007
Summary: A Bucket of Ashes, a romantic novel set in Britain and Nigeria, by Jill Lanchbery is published by Libros International. At the heart of A Bucket of Ashes by Jill Lanchbery is an old fashioned love story. The book will appeal to anyone who reads romantic fiction, but it also has the depth and content to captivate the general reader. . . . more

 A memory of Kyoto - Category: Recreation - Travel 11/21/2007
Summary: A memoir of a memorable trip to Kyoto. Amongst all the tourist sites, it's a simple human error that provides the most lasting memory. . . . more

 Up and Down in Toledo, the expected and the surprising - Category: Recreation - Travel 11/21/2007
Summary: A visit to Toledo primarily to see the El Greco paintings reveals an unexpected discovery. . . . more

 A Silk Road Trip, or I Gobbed in the Gobi, China,1992, by Philip Spires - Category: Recreation - Travel 11/21/2007
Summary: In August 1992, myself and my wife, Caroline, arranged a trip to post-Tiananmen China. As ever, I kept a journal of the trip, which ran to more than fifty pages. A few years later, I condensed the experience to two sides of A4, ignoring rules of grammar and syntax, and produced the following ramble, a perhaps poetic impression of nearly a month of travel. . . . more

 Europe revisited, reinterpreted - Category: Arts - Writers Resources 11/21/2007
Summary: A review of A Ruby in Her Navel, a novel by Barry Unsworth . . . more

 Puss in Boots (El Gato con Botas), an opera by Xavier Montsalvatge - Category: Arts - Music 10/11/2007
Summary: XXavier Montsalvatge's music is little known outside Spain. Philip Spires reviews a recent performance of his opera, Puss in Boots, and discovers a miniature gem. . . . more

 A Culture of Benidorm - Category: Recreation - Travel 10/11/2007
Summary: Benidorm has long been associated with mass package tourism, beer, sun, sand, sea and beaches, and the occasional wild disco. here philip Spires invites the traveller to consider a wholly different view. . . . more