Welcome To My Blog

Welcome to my blog. I am Rob Donovan, author of 'The Road to Corbyn - A Modern Day Pilgrim's Progress'.

Following the style of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, my work begins with the conceit of a dream in which Pilgrim, a contemporary seeker after truth, is introduced together with the characters Hope, Charity, and the Interpreter.

Pilgrim's journey is through the lifetime of the 2010-2015 U.K. government, and then forward, past the General Election of May 2015 and on to the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of  the Labour Party in opposition. Pilgrim becomes more and more convinced of the truth of the Interpreter's guidance. This is a socialist work that will stimulate Telegraph and Guardian readers alike. It serves as A Young Person's Guide to Politics and it is a must-read for all Labour Party members of whatever age and persuasion.

It should be published by the spring of 2016 and setting up this blog is in part a preparation for that launch. But this blog is a platform for more than just this. My description for this blog is 'Unrobing the emperors and other matters of concern' and that neatly encapsulates what is important to me. I am a child of the sixties and I become more and more convinced of the value of that decade in sowing the seeds of authentic and necessary rebellion. Sure, for me and many others, there were a host of issues from our adolescence and early life wrapped up with the rebellion but what was healthy was a new take on the world that could spot the crap and was no longer afraid to call it such.

I shall also be keeping you up-to-speed on my latest literary venture: a biography of Jago Stone (1928-88), artist. In his autobiography, 'The Burglar's Bedside Companion', Jago likened himself to a Don Quixote figure tilting at the windmills of convention. He was a guest of Her Majesty for nearly two decades of his adult life and later went on to claim that he had sold more pictures than any other British artist. I promise this will be a tale of a life well worth rescuing from obscurity.

What else from this blogger? What are my other matters of concern? In no particular order, there will be tales of the joy of running and the trials and tribulations of keeping fit - and the power and exhilaration of entering the cinema and yielding to the experience of film - and the excitement of reading and discovering new voices that shed fresh light on what it is to be a human being ...