Richard Newton
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irnewton.bsky.social
Richard Newton
@irnewton.bsky.social
440 followers 870 following 230 posts
Writer, reader, traveller. Author of 'Taylor & Burton in Africa'.
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Me in the unofficial throne room of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, 1994.
My pic from a cheetah sighting in Kruger National Park, South Africa, in 2023. On the whole, Kruger is an example of how mass tourism can work in a wildlife area. But lately there's been an explosion of OSVs (Open Safari Vehicles), and they don't always follow the rules.
The Serengeti wildebeest migration is perhaps the most extreme example. Tourists are now blocking the prime riverbank exit routes, forcing the wildebeest back into the river.
Treasure Island was apparently inspired by the coast around Carmel, Clint Eastwood's bailiwick, and now the golden retriever capital of the world.
Steinbeck link: Robert Louis Stevenson lived in Monterey.
Perhaps the best adaptation of a Donald E Westlake book - and there have been plenty.
I can never get over the fact that Charles Dance's dad fought in the Boer War.
The Duellists, based on a story by Joseph Conrad, is terrific.
More likely, he watched Brian De Palma's Scarface, which opens with Castro flooding the US with prisoners and asylum inmates.
Its election time in Malawi as we speak. I still have this flyer from the 1994 election.
I lived there on and off from 1986-94. I was definitely a Green man. The other choices were Brown (bitter), Black (stout), or Gold (Special Brew).
Wilder's A Foreign Affair is worth a watch. A steely Republican congresswoman meets the real world in post-war Berlin.
The second one is especially bookseller friendly.
In the 20-odd years I spent as an expatriate, innumerable get-togethers would feature an ex-serviceman getting up to perform his party piece. It was always Gunga Din.
Are you saying Moby-Dick was a fish?
John Shade. Charles Kinbote, on the other hand.....
The clip in the trailer of Nigel Tufnel as an artisanal cheesemaker augurs well.
The venue of my faux pas. Ed Fancher died in 2023, aged 100. Can only imagine the Mailer stories he took with him.
I once travelled around Slovenia with Ed Fancher, co-founder of The Village Voice. I mentioned the Mailer wife-stabbing incident. Ed went very quiet. I didn't realise that the wife concerned, Adele Morales, had previously been Ed's girlfriend.