Samuel beckett
The best tribute possible to the greatest comics ever: Stan & Ollie reviewed
You mess with Laurel and Hardy at your peril. Their fan base is essentially the entire world. Samuel Beckett adored…
A real-life Tristram Shandy – found in a skip
Most modern biographers feed off celebrity like vampires let loose in a blood bank. That is why their books sell:…
Repetitive but compelling: Giacometti at the National Portrait Gallery reviewed
One day in 1938 Alberto Giacometti saw a marvellous sight on his bedroom ceiling. It was ‘a thread like a…
If there’d been a Gilbert and Sullivan opera about Roland Barthes, it might have sounded like John Banville’s The Blue Guitar
The Blue Guitar is John Banville’s 16th novel. Our narrator-protagonist is a painter called Oliver Orme. We are in Ireland,…
Francis Barber: reluctant member of Dr Johnson’s mad ménage
We know a great deal about Samuel Johnson and virtually nothing about his Jamaican servant, Francis Barber. The few facts…
The secret life of the short story
The short story likes to play the underdog. Famously unfavoured by publishers, it has none of the commercial clout of…
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‘The booster seat is for John Bercow.’
‘Turn me into a princess?
Haven’t I suffered enough?’
‘We’ve had the room
painted “privilege white”.’
‘The world is urging restraint, sir.’
‘He’s playing with his HS2 train set.’
‘Turn left on to the heath. Then you have reached your destination.’
Left: Man stands aside
for woman Right: Man doesn’t stand
aside for woman
‘My wife wants to send me to Coventry.’
‘Don’t just sit there, Google something!’
‘I used to be fat and sad. Then I exercised.
Then I dieted. Then I became superfit.
Superfit and supersad.’