Nostalgia
‘Sitting the 11-plus was the most momentous event of my life’ – Geoff Dyer
‘Everything else that has happened couldn’t have happened were it not for that’, says Dyer, in a funny, moving account of growing up in postwar England
News from a small island: Theft, by Abdulrazak Gurnah, reviewed
Decades of change follow the 1964 revolution in Zanzibar, with boutique hotels multiplying in Stone Town’s haunted streets. But is a whole way of life being threatened?
How to write a piano concerto
My Piano Concerto, The World of Yesterday, began with an email during one of the darker days of the pandemic:…
Who’s still flying the flag for Britpop?
Alex James’s embrace of the term distinguishes him from his contemporaries. Miranda Sawyer reminds us of how much of the best 1990s music fell outside Britpop’s retromania
Potato crisps and the British character
Pickled fish. Lemon tea. Cucumber. Doner kebab. Stewed beef noodles. Salted egg. Soft shell crab. Coney island mustard. Smoked gouda.…
Tales to tell
Despite the seediness and threat of violence, Littlehampton was a place of neighbourly camaraderie, fondly evoked in Sally Bayley’s latest memoir
The glory that was Greece
Imagine a new take on the Greek myth of Pygmalion. A love-shy artist makes a woman out of marble who…
Low Life
The other week I turned up for the village walking club’s Monday hike. A dawn meet. Two cars. A 90-minute…
The bittersweet lure of the past
At first glance, nostalgia does not seem like a subject much suited to exploration via the medium of the pop…
New York: the fact – and fiction
New York At times I used to think the place was real. The New York of films, that is. The…
On the waterfront
Much has been made of the American novelist Jennifer Egan’s mutation, in her latest novel, from purveyor of metafiction and…
A box of delights
Juliet Nicolson examines women’s lives and changing fashions through a rich hoard of buttons for all occasions
N.M. Gwynne’s diary: Old names worth dropping
As I get older (and my 74th birthday is now close), I get deeper and deeper into nostalgia. I do…
Restoration drama
Yes William Cook Rejoice! Rejoice! Fifty-four years after its destruction, Euston Arch has returned to Euston. Well, after a fashion.…
Reuniondues
A couple of weeks ago I returned to my old Oxford college for a ‘gaudy’ — posh, Oxford-speak for a…
What you’ll never find in the road atlas
Picture the map of Britain. Its strangely cadaverous shape, blobs of population and routes between them seem as familiar as…
Squash hits
Thank god for the Commonwealth Games: at least they gave us a brief respite from football transfer stories. Instead of…
Back in time to a childhood discovery in Africa
About 55 years ago, when I was about ten, my younger brother Roger and I discovered a slave pit in…
