Another forest falls for me

A lunchtime of pleasure and pain: pleasure at the pile of books in the post, pain at the voice of Tony Blair on the radio, lauding democracy while simultaneously avoiding saying anything unpleasant about the various billionaire dictators he's friends with. His cant, his humbug and his intellectual inadequacy were at the heart of his failure as PM. It's time he, Mandelson, Campbell, Brown, Prescott, Blears, Clarke and all the discredited apparatchiks took a vow of silence while a search for socialism with a soul takes place.

Anyway, no wonder I seek escape in literature. Although being a spec. fic. fan, most of it deals with the world Blair and co. have bequeathed us. Bacigalupi's post-oil Ship Breaker, Loomis's translation of Thomas of Britain's The Romance of Tristram and Ysolt in a lovely 1960s cover, Robert O'Brien's Z for Zachariah (teen post-apocalypse classic with a seriously nasty twist), and Chris Adrian's The Great Night (a dark retelling of A Midsummer Night's Dream set in a San Francisco park with real fairies). And finally, the DVD of Inside Job - a shocking (and beautifully-made) documentary about the financial crash which turned into a bank robber in which the banks became the robbers.

Most interesting, Spacetime Inn (1932) by the obscure and interesting Lionel Britton, working-class modernist. I can't afford the £170 or so to get a copy of his novel, Hunger and Love (1931), unfortunately, but this play is is fascinating. Check out the dramatis personae:

BILL, a Cockney Proletarian

JIM, his friend

THE HOST of Spacetime Inn

SHAKESPEARE

BERNARD SHAW

Dr JOHNSON

KARL MARX

NAPOLEON

QUEEN VICTORIA

QUEEN OF SHEBA

EVE

SERVING MAN

HAND-MAIDEN

The action takes place in the interior of an old-world inn.

The time is spacetime.

I haven't read it yet, but it looks fascinating.