Watched the Dylan Thomas biopic The Edge of Love the other night to try to take my mind off the snow.

Good acting, atmospheric depiction of London in the Blitz, and on the whole very entertaining.

The film isn't really about the life of Dylan Thomas, just a snapshot of a short period of time focusing on an incident involving a shooting at one of the Welsh cottages the poet lived in with his wife Caitlin.

The film prompted me to find out more in Paul Ferris's superb biography, which I read on the X3 bus into Oxford.

Then I listened to Thomas's melancholy rendering of his poem Fern Hill on CD. He had an extraordinary voice.

After finding myself mildly entertained by Nick Hornby's latest novel Juliet, Naked, I dug out my paperback copy of Fever Pitch.

The plug on the cover says something like Best Football Book Ever Written which Hunter Davies might take issue with, but it's probably not too much of an exaggeration.

Hornby ended up living nearer Reading than Arsenal but by then he was already a Gooner.

I think Hornby's first-person stuff is even better than his fiction and he should do more of it.

Every night for the past week my family has been tuning into BBC2 for Michael Portillo's rather old-fashioned broadcasts of railway routes of the north.

The former Tory MP has taken the train to a number of interesting locations including Manchester, York, Hull, Bridlington and Pontefract.

Portillo nevers fails to meet someone with an interesting story to tell and I hope the Beeb gives him some cash to make more programmes.

The programme reminded me to read Betjeman's fruity poem The Licorice Fields at Pontefract which starts like this:

In the licorice fields at Pontefract

My love and I did meet

And many a burdened licorice bush

Was blooming round our feet.