MY CULTURAL LIFE
Steve Cavanagh was born and raised in Belfast before leaving for Dublin at the age of 18 to study law. He practiced civil rights law until last year when he became a full-time writer. Steve has been involved in several high-profile cases; in 2010 he represented a factory worker who suffered racial abuse in the workplace and won the largest award of damages for race discrimination in Northern Ireland’s legal history. He holds a certificate in Advanced Advocacy and lectures on various legal subjects (but really he just likes to tell jokes). Hi new book Fifty Fifty has just been published by Orion and is available now. Find out more at www.stevecavanaghbooks.com or follow Steve on Twitter @ SSCav
Film: Le Mans 66
I hugely enjoyed Le Mans 66, with Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby and Christian Bale as Ken Miles. It’s the story of Ford v Ferrari in the 1966 Le Mans 24-hour race. It sounds like a bloke fest but my wife loved it. James Mangold directed it and it is easily his best movie. A cracking true-life story.
Podcast: WTF Podcast
You should listen to the WTF Podcast with US comedian Marc Maron. He’s interviewed Obama, Springsteen, Di Caprio and Pitt — you name them, they’ve been on. Marc is a fantastic conversation machine and these interviews are heartwarming and just a whole lot of fun.
Book: Death in the East
I can’t just recommend one, can I? I’ve recently loved Abir Mukherjee’s Death In The East, a brilliant crime novel which hooks you in from the very beginning and transports you to early 20th-Century India. Not to be missed. Also Mick Herron’s Slough House series about a group of spies who have fallen out of favour with MI6 and work on their own terms under the guidance of Jackson Lamb — one of the finest characters in modern fiction.
Music: Pearl Jam
The new Pearl Jam album Gigaton is immense. It veers from punk to pop rock and everything in-between but is delivered with the usual Pearl Jam style of building rhythm and momentum into wild choruses and fingermangling guitars. All shot through with Eddie Vedder’s incredibly soulful and emotional vocals. It’s a must.
TV: 60 Days In
Really enjoying the series 60 Days In, a US reality show where members of the public pretend to be thrown into a real jail so that they can help the authorities in tracking down the faults in their system. This jail is so terrible, incredibly dangerous and the contestants are dropping like flies. It’s truly frightening, and entertaining.