As a journalist and broadcaster for 40 years I find solace now in writing, art and photography. Being able to blog fulfills my journalistic urges.
My reading hours are spent in text books, historic and technical. There is always something new to learn about the internet or digital painting or the magical pursuit of paint on canvas. Historical facts are a constant quarry. If not correcting myself others do sooner rather than later, thankfully.
Fiction: War and Peace remains the book that I treasure most. Apart from its epic qualities character crafting, it has an emotional trigger. My mother died in 2001 in Wales where she lived. I had just returned from China and was down with pneumonia leaving me unable to drag myself to her funeral. It was then that I re-read Leo Tolstoy's volumes . I had read it in youth in search of writing skills but without much understanding of the book's epic qualities. Experience brings on understanding.
Graham Greene, Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway occupied a good deal of my time in youth. So too did Jack Kerouac's beat generation. Lately, I have enjoyed the works of Charles Bukowski because he exposed the drudgery of working life and the workplace in way that few authors have succeeded since say, Emile Zola in his time. Bukowski is not for the faint-hearted. His prose and his poetry strike hard and with a few repetitive vulgar adjectives.
What I never forget is that the first abiding love affair I had was with a young woman who was murdered. I was heart-broken for R.D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone.
When I think of movies it is the stars that make them as much as the writers and directors. John Huston had it. Bud Schulberg had it. But script is useless if the actor cannot get into the lines and Humphrey Bogart is among the masters in The Caine Mutiny (about pressure and overwork) and the Treasure of Siera Madre (about human greed); or Marlon Brando's character in On the Water Front (corruption and the working class) (Kazan/Schulberg), and then in The Young Lions (war and corruption of the human soul).
Latterly I favoured the work of Oliver Stone - Platoon and in this Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings op 11, added to the chemistry.
Then there are the poets...I favour Pablo Neruda for his luscious romantic imagery. Wilfred Owen would be close, too, for his war poetry and Bukowski arriving more recently.
In food I favour grilled lobster with hot buttered with garlic, sardines tinned in olive oil - Epicure being the brand. Roast Beef and Yorkshire pud with roast spuds, and thick gravy, please. Whenever I am in the UK, fish and chips, Eccles cakes and custard pies. For home cooking I go to http://encyclofeedia.com/
My wish? To enjoy good health.
A last wish? For death without pain.