Rather a nice reader reaction to Murder in Samarkand this morning:
I am not one who has that innate ability to plough through endless books but a casual accquintance recommended your book so I bought it to read on holiday. I couldn’t put the thing down and believe me, that is a first. Most books take me weeks to read but I finished yours in four days. I knew this government was corrupt and devoid of any moral fibre, but the extent to which you have shed light on it, stuns me. I knew Blair was lying the moment he said in a televised debate prior to invasion of Iraq that the war wasn’t about oil. I have read a few other books about 9/11, the War on ‘Terror’ and the Iraq War and most of it needed to be taken with a pinch of salt, but your book struck a chord from the off and I had no reason to doubt or disbelieve the validity of your account. Anyone who doesn’t smell a rat with this government’s foreign policy (and domestic policies for that matter) needs their head examining.
Meantime, A Mighty Heart continues to garner stellar reviews in the States prior to its opening on Friday. A fun spat in the US when Fox News were banned from the premiere. Michael Winterbottom is now filming Genova in Italy with Colin Firth, and plans to start shooting Murder in Samarkand with Steve Coogan in February. Shooting will run from February to June to capture the range of extreme continental Central Asian weather conditions experienced in the book.
Craig,
this is similar to the response I get from all my friends and colleagues who have read the book. Believe me, you book is making a real difference out there. My father has found it a particularly difficult book to read with regard to the tremendous pressure you were put under by your employers. He worked hard for many years as a trade union official but as soon as New Labour was born the spinning started and the knives came out for anyone who was prepared to stand up and be counted. I hope reading your book and relating to your experiences will help him overcome the depression that has since blighted his life.
You have shared a great deal with us in your amazing book – you are a much stronger person than you probably consider yourself to be after all you have been through.
Stevie,
Thanks very much. I hope your father was cheered by the fact that eventually my own union played a major role in supporting me and getting me through it all.
Craig
Back in the early 1960s a group of us talked about all that is happening today it had to happen back then people used to talk about what was going to happen when the oil ran out.All of this was predicted even then it wasn't just us.I remember reading in the early 1970s that the USA were going to set out on a program to REFILL empty Texas oil wells to prepare for the running out of oil,never heard anymore about that.It did pass my mind that with the USA gaining control of Iraqi oil wells they may be doing just that now? if the program they were talking about back in the 1970s didn't take off then?.Here in Britain it was ask why we didn't fill old mine workings with oil to prepare for oil running out. As for this so called disaster (that I and others call a TOTAL and UTTER CATASROPHIE) does it not occur to people that it is all part of a well laid out plan that is what we thought back in the early 1960s would happen what else could have happened.If this is not the case then we WON'T see the USA having to move into Saudi Arabia when trouble starts there to safeguard world oil supplies of course?.Saudi Arabia is the key to all this it is the Jewel in the Crown of this plan.Talking about oil wars what will be said I wonder if (did I say IF) climate change takes it's toll and food supplies start to become scarce I suppose we will then have food wars.It's not hard to work out what will happen is it..
There are of course many other considerations to bring to the fore in the destabilization of the middle east.Israel is more then desperate for more land as it continues to expand it's population and become even more powerful it wants to stand on it's own two feet without any help from the USA and the USA doesn't want to spend even more money propping it up but still wants an even more powerful friend in the region/world.To this end the annexing of part or all of Lebanon into a greater Israel must be the driving force of Israeli thinking in all this.