(I’ve been an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Governance since March 2002. That was a five-year appointment, and anyway they have rejigged the way they do honorary titles, so it’s now going to be a Visiting etc etc at the School which the Institute was part of.)
(Strictly speaking Carnival is next week, but that’s also half-term so F’s school celebrated yesterday. As he explains:)
“This is what i dressed up as in the Carnival yesterday; It is Horus the egaptian god.”
(An unusual choice, but why not?)
Biography is a genre, and as with SF, when it is written by people unfamiliar with the conventions and expectations of the genre you get something clunky. It’s apparent from his comments about the book that Patterson has no idea what people mean when they say “contextualise and get under the skin” — that he doesn’t see that we want him to ask questions not make up answers. I think that despite his vast and detailed research he wasn’t really the right person to attempt this.