Books
Heroes in error
In the first year or so of the Iraq occupation — or ‘big Army goatfuck’, as it is not quite…
The faceless man in the bowler hat
Surrealism was, at least initially, as much about writing as painting. A plaque on the Hotel des Grands Hommes in…
Getting away with murder
Cher Hughes loved the beauty, the white sand beaches and sun-kissed climate of the tropical islands of Bocas del Toro…
Playing at shepherdesses
Oh, the longueurs of aristocratic Georgian leisure. What on earth did they do all day, with no domestic chores, no…
Glimpses of beauty
Born in Michigan, raised in Lagos and educated in London and New York, Teju Cole is about as cosmopolitan as…
You can run but you can’t hide
In The Circle, Dave Eggers’s satirical dystopia about an insatiable Google-like conglomerate, there’s a scene in which drones hound a…
The Teutonic King Arthur
Hitler, ever seeking to emulate strong German hero types (especially if their Christian name was Frederick), unsurprisingly named his great…
A five-ring fiasco
The ambitions of the founding father of the modern Olympic Games, the Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin — that they…
Rich in legend and song
There is an immediate problem for anyone producing a guide to places in Scotland with literary connections: as Walter Scott…
Maryland’s mean streets
Quick tip, should you ever find yourself alone in the interview room at the police headquarters of Prince George’s County,…
‘I wish you were never born’
All parents worry about the extent to which their children will expose their private weirdness to the world. They tell…
Paean to the Starman
On 11 January 2016 Paul Morley was awoken by an urgent voicemail from the Today Programme. Could he talk about…
Smashing stuff
‘Joe lay in bed in his mother’s house. He thought about committing suicide. Such thinking was like a metronome for…
Nothing new under the sun
Rupert Sheldrake had it coming. In A New Science of Life (1981), he argued that animals and plants have inherited…
The gospel truth
More brides in Britain go down the aisle to Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ than to any other tune, Simon…
Slaying sacred cows
It is a measure of Andrew Bolt’s ignominy that it takes a certain courage simply to walk into Dymock’s and…
In the steppes of the Golden Horde
When I first visited the complex of Buddhist cave grottoes, dating from the fifth to the 14th century, at Bezekilk…
The great sulker
Ted ‘Grocer’ Heath, as he will always be for me, was chosen by his fellow MPs to be their leader…
Riding high
How’s this for a heartwarming set-up? Forty-something recovering alcoholic and aspiring artist Ginger copes with the disappointment of being unable…
Pitch perfect
One day, many seasons ago, Jon Hotten was on the field when a bowler took all ten wickets. In his…
Stiffen the sinews
It’s not unreasonable to expect that the anatomy syllabus for a medical degree should include breasts. Last year I performed…
Death in Greenwich
With the current political saga running in our heads, trumping all other stories, it has been hard to concentrate on…
Something new out of Africa
In a Johannesburg mall, a listless and lonely IT worker chats with his dad about the bitter fruits of upward…
Russia’s dumping ground
Almost as soon as Siberia was first colonised by Cossack conquistadors in the 17th century, it became a place of…
A familiar life (revisited)
A Life Revisited, as the modest, almost nervous, title suggests, mainly concerns Evelyn Waugh’s life with comments on but no…
