The myth of the ‘trustworthy’ Scottish accent
There was once a belief that for TV and radio commercials, a Scottish voice was more ‘trustworthy’. This was particularly…
Why becoming an MP can ruin your life
It takes seven years to know your way around Parliament. That’s what I was told when I arrived in the…
Ten years on: the world the crash made
With September marking a decade since the Lehman Brothers implosion, stand by for a slew of economic retrospectives. Any meaningful…
Did the crash create populism? If only it were that simple
We often hear it said that the financial crash created populism. It is now a familiar story: that the Lehman…
How Nike turned a protest about racial injustice into advertising
Every so often sport bursts its banks, spills from its usual courses and goes flooding incontinently onto the news pages.…
Tales of UFOs and mysterious big cats come as standard in Cannock Chase
Cannock Chase is the long, low range of hills that’s visible to your right as you drive north up the…
John Law: the Scottish gambler who rescued France from bankruptcy
John Law was by any standards a quite remarkable man. At the apogee of his power in 1720, he was…
The personality test that conned the world
The other day in the Guardian’s Blind Date column, two participants, or victims, finished off an account of their frightful…
Hoping to find happiness: Paris Echo, by Sebastian Faulks, reviewed
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a serious novel must be in want of a theme. Paris Echo soon…
How a faulty map led to the discovery of America
Reflecting on the genesis of Treasure Island, the adventure yarn that grew from a map of an exotic isle he…
All things lead to 9/11: An American Story, by Christopher Priest, reviewed
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 many writers spoke of feeling immobilised. The scale of the attacks and the world’s…
The scramble for the Middle East: Britain and America fall out
One of the many pleasures offered by Lords of the Desert, which narrates the rivalry between Britain and the United…
The body in the cellar: another grisly unsolved Victorian murder
Literary non-fiction demands that a respectable household is not really a respectable household — and the Bastendorffs of 4 Euston…
The sight of blue hydrangeas brings out the worst in Henri Cole
This new book, from the NYRB’s publishing arm, is in a non-fiction genre I love: short entries dedicated to an…
The horrors of rewilding
This unusual book begins with an account of the author’s ten-year love affair with dairy farming and an attempt ‘to…
A paean to lesbian love: Aftershocks, by A.N. Wilson, reviewed
The polymath writer A.N.Wilson returns to the novel in Aftershocks, working on the template of the 2011 earthquake which devastated…
From ancient Egyptian smut to dissent-by-currency: I object at the British Museum reviewed
‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,’…
The gentle side of Bruckner: Rotterdam Philharmonic’s Prom reviewed
It’s intelligent, enjoyable, beautiful to look at and funny in unexpected places, yet Othello at the Globe didn’t quite meet…
The gentle side of Bruckner
The lady behind me on Kensington Gore clearly felt that she owed her friend an apology: ‘It’s Bruckner. I don’t…
Bad news for fans of good TV drama – there’s three more corkers to keep up with
This week was bad news for fans of good television drama series — mainly because there’s now three more of…
Sensation seeking
This adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s play is handsomely mounted, as they say, and features a stellar cast (including Annette Bening,…
The man who’s spent 40 years trying (and failing) to become a pop star
‘I could still be a pop star,’ says Lawrence, sitting on a footstool in his council flat, high up in…
What it was like to be a black lawyer in the deep south in the 60s
To have been a black lawyer in the deep south of America in the early 1960s would have taken a…
Is there anything weirder on YouTube than Alejandro Jodorowsky’s tarot readings?
Alas, the great Alan Partridge never got to make Inner-City Sumo, despite his famously desperate pitch to BBC TV commissioners.…
The joy of a Greek summer
Some jerk know-nothing writes in an unreadable American newspaper that Greece is back — Athens, actually. He would, he’s an…
