Croydon

There’s nothing ironic about civilisation

30 August 2025 4:00 am

A recent photograph on a BBC website startled me. It was of hundreds of books thrown out of a former…

A David Bowie devotee with the air of Adrian Mole

17 May 2025 9:00 am

Plodding through suburbia in Bowie’s footsteps, Peter Carpenter might be Sue Townsend’s hero incarnate – and there’s even an omnipresent friend called Nigel

Dick Whittington for the 21st century

27 June 2015 9:00 am

Novels of such scope and invention are all too rare; unusual, too, are those of real heart, whose characters you…