Kevin Costner, The Big Clock and Archive on 4

JFK, Bobby and Dad (BBC Radio Archives on 4) was disappointing. There was none of the fast talk we saw in 13 Days and while I could tell that the presidential advisor, Kenny O'Donnell, played by Kevin Costner in the film, was close to JFK, the buddy-buddy relationship didn't quite come across. O'Donnell clearly respected both Kennedys and comes across as a little scared of Jackie. If you are interested in the Cuban missile crisis and contemporary records from inside the White House you could try The Kennedy Tapes. This is not an endorsement as I haven't yet had the pleasure. You would, arguably, find out more about the crisis from these transcripts than from the O'Donnell/Vancour tapes.

Now a confession. Listening to the programme - and you have three days left to listen from the date of this post - my mind went on a little trip via 13 Days and Kevin Costner to No Way Out, a decent enough thriller about a Soviet agent in the US Navy. The best scenes are those in which the hero is helping to look for a culprit in a closed-down multi-storey building, but unknown to his colleagues is himself the subject of the chase. And that led me to thinking about the original book upon which were based No Way Out and an eponymous film from 1948. I have had the pleasure so this is an endorsement: The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing.  

I beg your apology for this post that is only slightly linked to archives and promise that normal service will resume soon, with news about the photographer behind the Blitz photographs.