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Here we review books and CD-ROMs in the following categories:
- Non-fiction titles by or about British journalists, including collections of articles, travel books, biographies and autobiographies.
- Source/reference books or CD-ROMs, and teaching guides.
Publishers with books or CD-ROMs for review should contact us at:
Crooked Angels
Author: Carol Lee
Publisher: Arrow Books
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Price: £6.99
ISBN: 0-09-941612-3
Every journalist lives in fear of what happened to Carol Lee. Waking up one morning with shooting pain in her arms, Carol soon finds that she can barely move, let alone operate a computer keyboard.
Crooked Angels is the story of how she first confronts her illness and then seeks a cure. Early on, the book describes how Carol visits various doctors and specialists, some of whom only manage to make matters worse. When she finally locates an osteopath who can help, we discover that medical facts alone cannot explain away the pain.
Actually, we never find out exactly what the illness is called. RSI could well be part of it, but the pains seem too complex to be dismissed with a single label. At least, this is what Carol believes. Her osteopath explains that the problem is deep-rooted, pointing out that the body is like a piece of paper that records your past traumas.
Indeed it's the Carol Lee's past that takes up most of the book and she is astonishingly frank about her childhood. There's the father who crushed her with the weight of his religious beliefs and the overbearing grandmother who threatened to burn her handwritten poetry. The most interesting part relates how Carol copes with childhood in Africa, where she plays with elephants and learns to shoot guns, and a poor household in Wales. The scenes she describes seem like a bygone age, but sadly we never find out exactly when they took place.
Carol is less coy about her personal idiosyncrasies, laying bare even those that took place in later life. As a successful young reporter on the Daily Mail, Carol she is afraid of going to sleep in case her confidence literally vanishes overnight.
It's a sad story in many ways, but Carol Lee's beautiful writing pulls you from page to page so strongly you just can't stop reading. At the end of it all you come to the conclusion that Carol is no ordinary victim. Instead she's a strong-willed woman who has forged a successful career, mostly in spite of her family. Illness is just one more battle she has had to fight.
Graham Southorn
A Journalist’s Guide to SourcesDavid Spark
Focal Press £14-99
398pp
ISBN 0-240-51470-XWant to find out about Tourette Syndrome, or speak to an expert on taxation? Look no further - David Spark’s A Journalist’s Guide to Sources contains telephone contact numbers for a large range of disparate subjects, from accidents to Zimbabwe.
Organised into seven sections, including ‘people at work’ and ‘the countryside’, it contains sub-categories listing addresses, phone and fax numbers of apposite organisations, plus a smattering of academic specialists. That, of course, might be a drawback in itself - the single expert on mad cow disease has probably taken his receiver off the hook by now.
While the meat of the book is phone numbers, there’s also a short but interesting appendix on investigative reporting, and a substantial introduction on where to start looking for information. Spark lists a number of authoritative reference books stocked by local libraries and newspaper offices, and explores what you can reasonably expect from sources like government offices, universities and specialist magazines.
In trying to be all things to all journalists, a book this size clearly has to be fairly selective and there’s bound to come a time when you find it wanting. Even so, there are some surprising omissions, like The National Film Theatre from the films section. And the chapter on Internet sources is similarly scanty, namechecking a handful of service providers and commercial on-line services but neglecting URLs for Web sites like Journalism UK.
The book’s biggest fault is its slim 20-page index, in which you won’t find names like ‘Tourette Syndrome’ and ‘Liberal Party’. Unless you have time to skim through each time you need a number, you’re forced to become familiar with its contents . That said, A Journalist’s Guide to Sources should be an invaluable first point of reference for trainees and non-specialist freelancers looking for leads.
Graham Southorn