Interviewed by Martina Purdy on ‘the art of the political speech’ for tomorrow night’s BBC magazine programme (1st November), ‘The View’, which replaced ‘Hearts & Minds’ but is not as good. Asked my opinion on the best speech I ever heard I cited Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in August 1963.
Published a piece on Eamonn Mallie’s website re last week’s meeting in Lisburn.
25th October. Was invited by Vince Curry of the UDA-linked Ulster Political Research Group to participate in a panel discussion tonight in a loyalist area of Lisburn as part of the John McMichael Memorial Debate.
20th October. Wrote a piece for the Eamonn Mallie website on the thirtieth anniversary of the 1982 Assembly elections which saw Sinn Féin enter the electoral arena: ‘The Ballot Paper in This Hand’.
Finished ‘Blue Orchid’ by Eoin McNamee, a novel which was well-received upon publication two years ago, and is not unlike his novel ‘The Blue Tango’ which was about the real murder of a judge’s daughter, Patricia Curran in 1952. The disreputable Curran also features as the trial judge in ‘Blue Orchid’ and sentences a man to death for the killing of a girl not unlike his own daughter.