That Was The Week That Was — 24th May 2026

It didn't matter anyway...he wasn't made for peace, he couldn't believe in it. Heaven was a word: hell was something he could trust.
— Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

When I'm travelling — as i found myself this week heading for dinner with clients in London — I try and make the most of the transient times between one destination and another to either read, write or both. The time travelling can feel tangential to the everyday routine, feeling like I'm an actor in another role for a few days, when I'm in London especially.

Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, a story set in the 1930s about good and evil, held me captive as I sat at various places around London including Franco's and Brown's Hotel. Many will remember Richard Attenborough's brilliant portrayal of the morally deficient Pinkie in the original film. Whilst the book is very much of it's time — set in the tea shops of the day — the themes of manipulation, hate, greed, love and power, good and evil are still and will always be universal. There's a wonderful little turn-of-the-knife at the end of the book very much facilitated by the new technology of the time — the ability to record a message onto a vinyl record.

The morning after dinner at Nobu — which was wonderful — found me winding my way to Skoob books in Bloomsbury's brutalist Brunswick Centre. The building itself was like something from a J.G. Ballard novel. My first visit to Skoob left me leaving empty handed having not been able to find a secondhand copy of To the Lighthouse. I love buying secondhand books as you often find little scars of previous owners, be that bus tickets used as bookmarks or notes and names scribbled in the often faded pages. Who were these people, what lives did they lead, what were they doing when they were reading that book?