Category Archives: Readers

Sad news last week that Fay Weldon had died aged 91.

Fay wrote some 30 novels (her first in 1967) plus drama, plays and short fiction. Her 6th novel Praxis was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She also worked an advertising copywriter and is credited with the famous ‘Go to work on an egg’ campaign slogan.

Perhaps her best known work is ‘The Life and Loves of a She-Devil’ published in 1983 – dramatised on BBC TV in 1986 and later by Hollywood starring Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr. Her other credits include ITV’s Upstairs Downstairs and an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for the BBC. She was well known for her sharp dialogue and scathing wit.

Just completed ‘An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth’ by Chris Hadfield (Pan Books 2015).

This is an enthralling account of Hadfield’s professional life from his early days training with Canadian Forces flying jet fighters, through some 300 pages of fascinating facts on his journey to becoming an astronaut aboard the Space Shuttle and finally station commander on the ISS. The latter illustrates perfectly his journey from a cramped launch capsule, to a busy schedule on the Space Station, ending with a crash back to earth in a hot box on the end of a parachute canopy.

If anyone has the notion that it’s all about posing in NASA coveralls and being feted by the media, forget it. In fact forget anything you might assume about training for space – no wonder so few make the grade. While space travel may sound glamorous, it’s only a small part of an astronauts life, the rest is graft.

The book is extremely readable and, having seen him running the BBC TV series ‘Astronauts: Have you got what it takes?’, it comes as no surprise just how incredibly difficult it is to qualify. Hadfield wins with his down-to-earth (!) descriptions and his endeavours to impress upon every reader that it really is tough up there.