Tom Burgis is an investigative reporter (Massive Financial Misdeeds Dept.) with a masochistic appetite for taking on the powerful. Here he looks at the swamp of corruption that engulfed a series of telecoms investments enacted by a Swedish company in various bribe-loving central Asian countries, and a dealmaker called Mohamed Amersi. Their corruption is not my problem, argues Amersi in his immaculate and unspattered tailoring; he just brings the parties together, it's for them to “diligence” each other. Some of Amersi's fortune has been gratefully received by the Conservative Party in the form of donations and winning bids at ghastly breakfast-with-Boris type auctions, and he has also tried to set up his own Conservative “friends of” central Asia/ North Africa group. But the Tories already have one of these, and when the MP Charlotte Leslie suggests some reasons why it might be an idea to take a closer look at Amersi's background, he sues for libel. Amersi's most common parry to Burgis' questions is that Burgis is an imbecile. That may be so, counters Burgis, but he also has a fat binder of documents to support the claims that Amersi finds so irritating. It's one thing to speak truth to power, but power doesn't need to speak back these days. Rather, it instructs terrifying lawyers, whose threats of bankruptcy, reputational composting and a permanent end to one's serenity tend to make even the fattest binders run away fast. 

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You may perhaps have been observing the rituals of World Book Day this week, which seem to involve dressing a child in the style of a fictional character and little in the way of reading.

(Although a bright future awaits the York lad who grabbed a toaster, a kettle and some hair straighteners and went as “Page 86 of the Argos Catalogue”.)

Also paying homage to the occasion on March 7 was the website thescottishfarmer.co.uk (“informing, supporting and entertaining farmers since 1893”), with a feature headlined “Ten highly regarded books on Scottish farming to check out”.

Although the piece appears under the byline of the site's digital content manager, I can't help but suspect that “the Scottish farmer” has let AI onto its acreage to perform some of the tasks traditionally undertaken by humans. 

For among titles such as Magic Moments: Four Seasons on a Scottish Hill Farm, by Tom Duncan, and My Father Was a Farmer in New Cumnock, by Iain Baird, is this, at number nine: Farming Machinery – Combine Harvesters – With Information on the Operation and Mechanics of the Combine Harvester, by Various Authors.

Farm Machinery: Combine Harvesters (to give it its correct title) claims (says Amazon) to be “a fascinating work and is throughly recommended for anyone interested in farm machinery”, with chapters on The Threshing Mechanism, The Handling of the Straw and etc.

Published by Gadow Press at £9.99, the book's delivery time is also appropriately agricultural: “usually dispatched within 1 to 3 months.” 

Another clue that the books desk of The Scottish Farmer has been too busy in the top field or out lambing to keep a flinty eye on their World Book Day top tens is the fact that this – Farming and the Land: Scottish Life and Society v. 2: a Compendium of Scottish Ethnology (Scottish Ethnology 2), by Alexander Fenton and Kenneth Veitch – is at three on the list.

Volume 1 is a far better read. 

What is your favourite book on farming in Scotland? Recommendations please to info@strong-words.co.uk.

On the topic of reports of whales and sharks bothering sailors' rudders, there's been another sighting, this one in a book that will be interrupting the smooth running of society in April, it's so good. The Wide Wide Sea, by Hampton Sides (Michael Joseph, £25, out April 11), about Captain Cook's third – and final – voyage, includes a quote from a midshipman sent out in a little boat to catch some fish off Christmas Island in 1777. “On every side of us swam sharks innumerable,” wrote one James Trevenan, “and so voracious that they bit our oars and rudder.” Ed.

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On the topic of blurbs, once more...

Ed, on blurbs and if they help or not, there's a good feature in The Atlantic from last year on the subject (link here – you need to sign up to read the whole thing). But basically, they've been around for ever (e.g. on Shakespeare's First Folio, in 1623: “‘The Wonder of our Stage!’ – Ben Jonson”). Blurbs have today reached the point where they are so overused that the contribution they make is negligible, but to not have them would “ruin a book's chances.” So basically, hard luck. They're useless, but they're staying. 

Gregory W.

There's a good piece on blurbs also on NPR here – turns out people have been banging on at length on this subject for quite a while now. It also quotes professional misery George Orwell in 1936 blaming the decline of the novel on “the disgusting tripe that is written by the blurb-reviewers.” Ed.

Please keep your thoughts on disgusting tripe coming, to info@strong-words.co.uk. 

And also...

A friend has just sent me a subscription to Strong Words, which is made in heaven for me. 

David P.

Welcome to paradise, David. (David has written a book about books – here's the link if you'd like to know more). Ed

An excellent reminder that opportunity can press your video doorbell at any moment comes in Suzy Ronson's lively new memoir, Me and Mr Jones (Faber, £20), about being the hairdresser and stylist to David Bowie, and marrying the guitarist Mick Ronson. 

Mick, from Hull, had always been musical, although his father thought being in a pop group no career for a Humberside lad and urged his son to join him at the local BP refinery. 

Mick paid no heed and hit the road at the dawn of the seventies in search of a musical career, “moving to London and living on baked beans before going on to Europe.” 

But neither the south nor Europe was ready for him, so after an arrest at Hyde Park Corner for driving without license or insurance, and “broke, hungry and homeless”, he returned to Hull. There, he took a job “as a school gardener, seemingly resigned to his fate.” 

Yet back in London, David Bowie, a virtual unknown on a relentless quest for attention, was putting another band together but couldn't find a guitar player to his liking. 

A member of the group “remembered his talented friend and went to Hull to persuade him, finding Mick marking out a football pitch.”

Even then, Mick took some convincing: “he had tried this before and quite liked gardening.” 

Eventually Ronson decided someone else could do the penalty spots and corner quadrants – a wise decision. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars would generate levels of hysteria not experienced since the Beatles. 

Ladies, if were you among the crowds roaring themselves hoarse at any of the Ziggy shows in the early seventies, I would like to talk to you for the next issue of the magazine. I have found plenty of men prepared to share ecstatic memories of that peak glam moment, but no women able to recall being there. If you were at one of the Ziggy gigs and are prepared to describe the effect it had on you, please raise your lighter at: info@strong-words.co.uk.

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In miraculous news, the current issue of Strong Words has now sold out.

If you missed it, apologies for not printing sufficient copies to meet demand, but this has never happened before. 

New subscribers have the option of starting from a recent back issue, such as those below, or waiting until issue 50 arrives next month for the magic to begin. 

If you find yourself on the fence about whether to commit, hopefully this showcase of recent pages here will help guide you toward a favourable decision.

It would obviously be unwise – and possibly even a little embarrassing – to miss out again on such a hot title.

So if you're ready to join the carnival, just follow this link.

Proving particularly popular for new UK subscribers is the £4 a month option, there being virtually nothing that costs less than £4 a month these days.

Strong Words – it's the Black Jack and Fruit Salad of magazines. 

Got a story you’d like to share? Or a question that's bothering you? Send your gossip, tips, literary sightings and intel to info@strong-words.co.uk

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