Writing
Diary
I met a Canadian couple for lunch in Edinburgh. They were from Vancouver – he a judge, she an opera…
Sound made visible
What particularly excites Silvia Ferrara, the author of The Greatest Invention, is not language per se but writing – that…
My crowning achievement
It’s fairly commonplace for people to wonder what, if anything, they’ll be remembered for. I’m going to be 59 later…
Finding a voice
Howard Jacobson, who turns 80 this year, published his first novel aged 40. Since then he has produced roughly a…
The Spectator’s Notes
We are always cautioned against comparing a modern political event with those that led up to the second world war.…
Poet’s notebook
Living, as Clive James put it, under a life sentence, and having refused chemotherapy, I find I respond to the…
So long, P.J.
Fond memories of the great satirist
Playwright’s notebook
I’ve been keeping a journal for nearly 60 years. There are piles of the damn things in archives and covered…
Stones notebook
I’ve lived in Chelsea for the past 35 years. Since 2002, I’ve photographed everything I find interesting here — churches,…
The Spectator’s Notes
The interregnum between incumbents is a well-known and often elongated process in the Church of England. I have recently witnessed…
I adore haikus
They got me through the past year
Fight club
When book groups turn nasty
Writer’s notebook
Whenever I give talks to children about my books they always ask who inspired me to be a writer. I…
The wife’s story
‘One day,’ she writes, ‘we had the Minister for Northern Ireland for the night. He arrived wearing a kilt, which…
Writer’s notebook
When, three years ago, I announced my retirement from writing fiction, the only thing that surprised me was the surprise…
Diary
My diary has been filled with dental appointments, reflecting a truism that American dentists pray for British teeth. The tally…
Letters
The Union in peril Sir: Fraser Nelson (‘The great pretender’, 15 May) writes that it has never been easier to…
The writing’s on the wall
Towards the end of April, my mum sent me a letter. She doesn’t write as a rule — we speak…
Physicist’s notebook
Spring is coming. There was snow in the garden till last week, here in Canada, where I have been spending…
Diary
Safe spaces, diversity quotas, gender-neutral pronouns, culturally relative facts, heteronormative hegemony. Are my right-on credentials right on enough? Am I…
Stranger than fiction
How I’d write Covid: The Thriller
Author’s Notebook
In the middle of December, for reasons I’m coming to, I woke early in a posh hotel. I lay semi-dozing…
‘People confuse sadness with darkness’
An interview with the American novelist Mary Gaitskill
City of gold
Peter Ackroyd on the undimmed spirit of London
Diary
I’m often asked when I’ll write a pandemic novel. I’m not sure I’d ever be tempted, though the backdrop of…
