A melancholy talent with a genius for send-up – Flann O’Brien was his own worst enemy
It is tempting to compare two highly intelligent, learned and gifted young Dublin writers, suffering under the burdensome, Oedipal influence…
Turn off and tune out
All good non-fiction writing shares certain characteristics: consistent economy, upbeat pace and digestible ideas that logically flow. Tech writers have…
Can a paedophilic relationship ever be excused?
Sofka Zinovieff’s new novel, Putney, is an involving, beautifully written, and subtle account of an affair in the 1970s between…
Travel literature
Jonathan Raban was largely responsible for changing the nature of travel writing. Back in the 1970s when he began, the…
Barry Humphries on Trump, transgender ‘rat-baggery’ and causing maximum offence
‘I’m an amateur,’ Barry Humphries tells me. The Australian polymath uses the word in its older sense of ‘enthusiast’ rather…
An embarrassing and misshapen dud: Opera Holland Park’s Isabeau reviewed
I’ve been trying to pinpoint the exact moment when it became impossible to take Mascagni’s Isabeau seriously. It wasn’t when…
Channel 4 doesn’t do ‘news’ in any meaningful sense of the word – it’s pure propaganda
When President Trump refused to take a question from a CNN reporter at the Chequers press conference last week, I…
If you like monstrosities, head to the Hayward Gallery
One area of life in which globalism certainly rules is that of contemporary art. Installation, performance, the doctrine of Marcel…
The marketisation of BBC radio is a recipe for creative disaster
There’s been a lot of fuss and many column inches written about levels of pay at the BBC, as revealed…
Extraordinary power and simplicity: Lehman Trilogy reviewed
Stefano Massini’s play opens with a man in a frock-coat reaching New York after six weeks at sea. The year…
Paul Simon says farewell with a daring and inventive show that left some restless
Early in 1987, a middle-aged woman approached me on the record counter of the Slough branch of Boots. ‘What do…
Dreary, familiar, empty watch – until Streep appears: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again reviewed
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again aims to do what it says on the can. That is, be Mamma Mia,…
Watch out, London: I might be moving back
New York I am seriously thinking of moving back to London. The family insists on it. New York, they say,…
Portrait of a seven-year-old state-run child
Saturday morning. Quarter to 12. Sit-down fish and chips at the Silver Grill: me, Oscar and Oscar’s cousin Atticus. Atticus…
It was either new carpets – or happy dogs
Instead of carpeting the upstairs of the house, I had grass fragments removed from the dogs’ ears. I can’t say…
The man who rode 2,300 winners
For Coleridge, ‘…the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind…
Bridge
Last Friday, merrily on my way to Young Chelsea (still the best IMPs duplicate in town), I couldn’t know that…
Mental sport
Sporting commentators frequently resort to chess metaphors to convey the flavour of a particular contest. In the case of football, chess tends…
no. 515
Black to play. This is from Carlsen-Polgar, Mexico 2012. Judit had been struggling in this game but when Carlsen slipped…
Net effect
In Competition No. 3057 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘The day the internet died’. Phyllis…
2368: Cobbled together
The unclued lights (two of two words, and the rest paired) are of a kind. Across 1 Book with…
to 2365: Beds
GARDEN (at 46 Across) reveals the theme. Paired solutions are ‘gardens’ in ‘countries’; 8/10, 32/1D, 33/28+29, 12/36, 37/34, 38/2, and…
Teen Vogue and the rebirth of Radical Chic
Are we witnessing the rebirth of Radical Chic? That was the term coined by Tom Wolfe in his 1970 essay…
When it comes to new technology, we’re all Luddites at heart
When I saw my first jogger in Wales in the early 1970s, I assumed he was running away from the…
