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Further Scam Emails

23 July 2026
Edoardo
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Categories: Blog, Things You Never Knew

There really is a radio programme called Literary Friction hosted by Carrie Plitt on NTS Radio. Of course this is a scam but I replied to see what would come back and here is the answer.

So here’s where it switches to trying to get money from the writer. No legitimate radio station would charge £150 for a Zoom interview. Next step in extracting money.

I suggested the next day at 9am. They just so happened to have a slot available.

I queried the account name – not obviously related to Carrie Plitt or NTS Radio.

I then mentioned that I had heard there were some dastardly people running scams and, while I hoped this wasn’t the case, could they reassure me. I must say, this is where the fraud really comes into its own.

The registered company name is correct so on the face of it, it seems legitimate. So well done, fraudsters, for doing some research. I will now reply saying that Carrie Plitt hasn’t heard of me (sadly, she hasn’t), and see what the response is.

They don’t give up easily! However, I wrote back saying I had spoken to Carrie Plitt, who confirmed that she, unfortunately, has never heard of me.

Fake Emails

8 July 2026
Edoardo
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Categories: Blog, Things You Never Knew

I, along with many other writers, have been receiving many, many emails recently, purporting to be from readers or publishers, but which are actually AI-generated scams. Here are two recent examples. Would you fall for them?

Book review: Praise of Folly by Erasmus

3 July 2026
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review
Praise of Folly by Erasmus

Quite possibly the cleverest book ever written. Unfortunately, because of that, most of it sailed right over my head. However, if you have the same level of erudition as Erasmus, are fluent in Latin and Greek, and are up to speed with the political and theological disputes and questions of the early 16th century, this might well be the perfect book.

Book review: Writing the Uncanny edited by Dan Coxon and Richard Hirst

3 July 2026
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review
Writing the Uncanny, edited by Dan Coxon and Richard Hirst

Here’s something that’s uncanny in its own way: that I have now established, beyond doubt, that any essay that starts off by revisiting a guilt-filled Catholic childhood overseen by domineering nuns is going to be rubbish. Funnily enough, the one essay in this otherwise excellent collection that does so uncannily proves my theory. Unfortunately, it’s the second essay in the book and, having read it, I was minded to put the collection aside. However, I persevered and I’m glad I did: the other essays are all at least worthwhile and some are quite brilliant. I particularly enjoyed Robert Shearman’s deep dive into the uncomfortable connection between comedy and horror.

For writers seeking to write uncanny fiction, it’s worth pointing out that there’s not much in here about specific writing techniques designed to evoke the uncanny; the essays are more reflective and personal than that. But for interesting glimpses into how different writers view, and try to write, uncanny fiction, it’s invaluable.

3 July 2026
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review
Of Ants and Dinosaurs by Liu Cixin

So, what if, back in the Cretaceous, there was a hyper advanced twin civilisation, based on the dinosaurs doing the thinking and the ants doing the making? Admittedly, not something I’d ever considered (one or other, yes, but not both) but it’s the basis of Liu Cixin’s story.

Right, let’s go with it. All sorts of clever work arounds so that ants and dinosaurs, not naturally suited to communicating with each other, are able to do so. Indeed, this is the best part of the book, the set up, when these two very different communities start working out how to work together.

Unfortunately, after that we start getting into fairly heavy-handed political allegory and symbolism, which is quite uninteresting and actually less profound than the book’s playful beginning. Even so, it might have worked. But the problem is, we all know how the age of the dinosaurs ended: the end-of-the-world rock smashing into the sea just off the Yucatan Peninsula. If Liu Cixin had found some way to work this in as the end of dinosaur/ant civilisation then the whole parable might have worked. But he didn’t. Instead, he invents an entirely different ending, with war between the ant and dinosaur civilisations finishing off the Cretaceous rather than the meteor. It’s strange he didn’t go with what we know: he could have worked it into the climax simply by having the two civilisations essentially hurling space rocks at each other and then one going awol and hitting where it shouldn’t.

On the whole, a disappointment.

Book review: The Moon’s A Balloon by David Niven

3 July 2026
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review
The Moon’s a Balloon by David Niven

Ah, fickle fame. When I was young, David Niven was one of the most recognisable actors in the world. Everyone knew him, particularly in England. But now, when I ask my sons, none of them had ever heard of him. The same is probably true for most of the stars that pepper the pages of his memoir: Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Olivier, James Stewart. Once, gods of the screen, now largely forgotten.

But if any of the young should ever open this book, they would find the most entertaining memoir. All right, it might feature people they have never heard of and films they’ve never seen, but the charm and the wit and the sheer comedy of many of the anecdotes will carry even those for whom the names carry no frisson of memory through the pages. It’s a delight. Niven brings his somewhat chaotic upbringing to vivid life, including the important part played in his growing up by a young lady with a generous heart, and then his somewhat unlikely route to Hollywood via the army. His portrait of 1930s Hollywood is fascinating and then – he goes to war. As soon as Britain declared war on Germany, Niven, by this point a major film star, leaves it all behind, sails back across the Atlantic and enlists.

And there, Niven stops. He tells us nothing at all about his time in the army, drawing a complete veil over that part of his life, before he returns to Hollywood and resumes the story, all wit, charm and glamour.

Niven was the consummate actor. His book is a performance and, as such, bears as much relationship to the real man as any part to the actor who plays it. But what an actor, and what a role: movie star in the Golden Age of Hollywood. How much is true? Who knows. But does it matter, when the lights roll and director cries, “Action!” Probably not.

Book review: Conquest by Ferdinand Addis

3 July 2026
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review
Conquest by Ferdinand Addis

There are some books that are defined by their titles. 1984. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Guns, Germs and Steel. However, there are others that are undone by their titles and Conquest is one of them. Any reader scanning the bookshelves would think this a detailed account of the Roman conquest of Britain – after all, that’s what it says on the cover! But in fact, the conquest only takes up about a quarter of the book.

A better, but less marketable title, would have been Britain: from prehistory to posthistory by way of the Roman occupation. What Addis does, and does brilliantly, is weave the history of Britain from a time before there was any history (that is, before any local historical records) into the wider history of Europe and then take that through the conquest, the centuries as a somewhat restive Roman province, through to the fall of the western Empire and the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons.

Addis is particularly good at bringing readers up to date with the astonishing results of aDNA testing, which is completely rewriting our understanding of the movements of people in prehistoric Europe. Archaeologists, suspicious of tales of the mass movements of people, have been busily reinterpreting all such migrations as cultural transfers. However, what is now clear is that many of these cultural transformations were indeed the result of one lot of people moving in and kicking out the previous residents: the Beaker folk and the Anglo-Saxons among them.

This is narrative history at its best but don’t believe what it says on the cover: the sweep of this book is truly panoramic, from the end of the Ice Age through to the start of modern Britain, and it deserves the widest readership. Hopefully, the title won’t put potential readers off.

Travels Through Time podcast

15 June 2026
Edoardo
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Categories: Bede, Blog

I was delighted to be invited onto the Travels Through Time podcast to talk about Bede. In this podcast, guests have to select a specific day in the life of their subject and take the listener through what happened and why that day was important.

For Bede, I chose 4 June 716 in Jarrow. This was the day that Bede’s long-time friend and mentor, Abbot Ceolfrith, announced to Bede, and his fellow monks at St Paul’s, Jarrow, that he was leaving them and setting off on what he anticipated would be a one-way trip to Rome, to take to the pope the gift of the one-volume edition of the Bible that they had made at the monastery. Bede, who was one of the principal scholars contributing to this edition of the Bible, was distraught at losing his erstwhile father.

Listen to the podcast to find out what happened, and for an insight into life in a monastery in the 8th century.

The Spotify episode is here.

The Apple podcasts episode is here.