What Ross has uncovered, both in the US and in Australia, are remarkable instances of UFO sightings that simply cannot be dismissed or explained. UFOs — or UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena) as they are called now — have been a subject so deeply mired in taboo and ridicule for so many decades that the default setting for science academia and the media has been to dismiss all serious discussion on the mistaken presumption there is nothing to see here. What becomes clear is that many people were aware of what Savile was doing for many years, although whether through complicity, corruption (to the very highest levels), or fascination with celebrity, nobody told. When victims did approach people in authority, they were ignored.

In Plain Sight :HarperCollins Australia In Plain Sight :HarperCollins Australia

As one might expect this was a bleak and depressing read, but it was also a frustrating one. Davies has done thorough research (including spending some time with his subject before his death and subsequent abject discrediting), and as a result his catalogue of Savile's crimes is as unrelenting as his reporting of the constant stream of patter, boasting anecdotes and weak jokes with which he successfully concealed them. The book is well researched, but not well-written - some sentences are awkward and others are incomplete or even ambiguous. I also think that the book fails to contextualise things properly: Lue Elizondo is a CIA spook who has claimed to have remote viewing powers, Linda Moulton Howe is a True Believer in every sense, Hal Puthoff has endorsed just about every paranormal phenomenon you could name, Leslie Kean is obsessed with mediums and the afterlife, and ditto for Robert Bigelow. It becomes easier to understand how so much deep lore has grown from the real events once you know what these people are like.

Ich kann das Motiv von Dan Davies, ein Buch über Jimmy Savile schreiben zu wollen, nicht nachvollziehen. Auf der einen Seite sagt er gleich zu Anfang, dass er seit er Savile als Kind das erste Mal sah, ihn nicht mochte. Auf der anderen Seite trifft er sich über Jahre hinweg regelmäßig mit einem Mann, den er nicht mag, vor dem er sich manchmal wegen seiner teilweise unappetitlichen Art regelrecht ekelte. War es Faszination oder der Wunsch, sein Treiben öffentlich zu machen? Denn Davies hatte schon früh einen Verdacht, dass Savile nicht der Gutmensch war, der er vorgab zu sein. What becomes clear is that it's not just Savile who's in the frame here. It's celebrity. Our attitude towards it. The way we treat it. The adulation we afford it. Ross is the co-author of bestselling books Dead Man Running and Above the Law, both exposes of organised crime in Australian and international outlaw motorcycle gangs, as well as Charles Bean, Lost Diggers, The Lost Tommys and Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze.

In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile - Goodreads In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile - Goodreads

It is an incredible read; preposterous, unbelievable, utterly damning about the institutions that were taken in and duped by Savile: the NHS, the BBC, the royal family, the government, the civil service, the entire nation. And a cast of characters that spans everyone from Elvis Presley to the Beatles, from the Rolling Stones to the Queen to the pope. It could never have been fiction. Everything about the Savile story strains credibility. The man who dressed like a paedophile was a paedophile. Though this is only one part of it – just as paedophilia was only one of his many crimes. It was the kaleidoscopic aspect of Savile's life that gave Davies the idea to write the book in the first place. He didn't just want to write about Savile but had the idea that the history of the nation's popular culture could be told through him. Could these (and other) videos be evidence of an extraterrestrial life visiting Earth? Maybe. It's pretty exciting to consider, in any event... The clutter of the room's time-warp interior was in stark contrast to the panoramic views of Roundhay Park and the hills beyond. An ancient-looking exercise bike, a low sideboard with two This Is Your Life books lying open on the top and a glass-fronted cabinet stuffed with what looked like cups, medals, plaques and various awards from his career in entertainment dominated the first half of the room. The final picture we readers get is one of a master manipulator, a money hungry psychopath, devoid of all emotions. A charmer, but one with an agenda. It is evident that he knew what he was doing and his charitable acts were a source of atonement. The author’s aim was to reveal the real side of Savile and he manages. There are some passages where he puts in some personal emotion and expresses disgust at his eating habits or his predatory habits. That was in 2004. "And that's when I first had the idea for the book. This interview that was meant to last an hour in his house lasted, I don't know, God, it was about seven hours, something like that. It just went on and on and on." He interviewed him again for another profile in 2006. And another profile again in 2008. Shortly after which he – bizarrely – ended up going on the QE2's farewell Mediterranean cruise with him and began researching his biography in earnest. "I saw myself going up the river of his life and hopefully finding out everything on the way and then having a climactic final confrontation with him. I was going to call it Apocalypse Now Then. The implicit awareness was that it was going to be dark, because even in that first meeting there was a real, dark, underlying subtle menace to him."I've thought long and deeply about how to review Ross Coulthart's "In Plain Sight". It is a book I never would have imagined myself reading a couple of months ago. In Plain Sight” is a book that claims to be an investigation into UFOs and impossible science, but it is more of a collection of anecdotes, hearsay, and speculation. The author, Ross Coulthart, is a former journalist who became interested in UFOs after witnessing a mysterious light phenomenon in New Zealand as a teenager. He decided to pursue this topic after leaving his job at 60 Minutes, and he interviewed various witnesses, researchers, officials, and insiders who claim to have knowledge or evidence of UFOs and related phenomena.

In Plain Sight - Wikipedia In Plain Sight - Wikipedia

The first half or so of the book is a good, broad overview of the historical UFO sightings. It helped me to "catch up" on the history of the UFO phenom. As a plus, there's a lot included here about sightings in Australia that the US audience might not be as familiar with. The second half covers a lot of recent occurrences, particularly about witnesses coming forward in the U.S. This was published in summer 2021, so before the recent US Congressional hearings.

One of the most harrowing parts is the testimony, quoted verbatim, of a 12 year girl he raped whilst she was in hospital. This account powerfully brings home the monstrous nature of this type of abuse. The girl tried to get the nurses and a doctor to believe her account. The inference is that staff at Stoke Mandeville were well aware of what Savile was up to, even advising children to pretend to be asleep if he came round at night. The reality is, though, he was never going to give up that which he'd guarded so jealously and for so long; the things he must have known would lead to his certain fall.