Helen Barrell's Blog, page 6

Interview: Verity Holloway and “Beauty Secrets of the Martyrs”

I was on holiday in Kefalonia as a child when I saw my first dead body: the rather wrinkly 16th century St. Gerasimus. He wasn’t on view for tourists, only for the eyes of the Greeks, but my grandad had spent so long faffing about with his Kodak that we were the last two tourists left in the church when his coffin was opened. He almost looked as if he was asleep, but it was hard to see if he was breathing under his thick velvet brocade gown. A monk chanted as a queue of penitents shuffled to...

You don’t need a typewriter to tell a story

It was the mid-80s: Cliff Richard was on telly, our video player was the size of a small family car, my mum had a perm. My dad’s fondness for pictures of ships managed to make itself felt through a forest of Christmas cards – which is still the case today. I, however, wasn’t fussed by any of this, for I had received my dream present. I had received a typewriter.

I think my desire for a typewriter had partly come about thanks to the advert for the Petite 990, clearly a massive rip-off of 198...

Lament for an Unavailable Spy

At some point, Poison Panic will be available on Amazon. How very exciting. Because I had a couple of minutes in which my brain demanded something to do and because it had no better idea, I searched for my name on Amazon. I wasn’t surprised that it queried if I’d spelled “Barrell” correctly, suggesting I was looking for a Helen of Troy barrel hot brush – but I was surprised that it returned a result for Lament for a Trapped Spy.It’s a novella I wrote as a teen and self-published like a fanzi...

Review: River, or The Adventure of the Haunted Policeman

River with colleague/”manifest” Stevie

There are hundreds of crime dramas on our TVs, and each one tries to attack this old genre in a new way – set it in Oxford (Inspector Morse), set it in two countries at once (The Bridge), highlight new technology (the seemingly endless CSI and NCIS franchises, Silent Witness, Bones), show the legal process from start to finish (Law & Order), do history at the same time (Ripper Street, Whitechapel, Anno 1790, Inspector Whicher, Peaky Blinders), use lavish...

Review: Spectre, or, UnSpectretacular

Whoever Photoshopped this, you are amazing.

Warning: spoiler-laden.

I am a Bond fan. I have read all the Ian Fleming novels, and the short stories, and Kingsley Amis’ study The James Bond Dossier. When I was 19 I wrote a novella called Lament For a Trapped Spy, abouta 1960s Bond fan. I am hugely fascinated by the Cold War and by figures like Kim Philby. My favourite era are the 1960s Bond films – even On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – and the Daniel Craig films. I’ve never been that fond of R...

Where have all the bookshops gone?

Photo nabbed from the Birmingham Post.

Ever since I’ve lived in Birmingham, I’ve loved the fact that there’s two massive Waterstones, and I do so love a Waterstones. They were divided by about 200 metres of shopping street – one, inhabiting a grade II listed grand wedding cake of a building with a huge high ceiling and gilt-covered curlicues (which used to be a bank) and a tall, imposing, many-floored 1930s building.

I don’t go to the city centre as much as I used to (there was I time I went...