Death has no mercy for the lads in A Shropshire Lad
Sweet dreams in the round reading room
The British Library is moving; we shall not be snoozing there again
A dead shark in the face of the public
The long-awaited triumph of plasma vorticism
Brit Crits Nix Car Wreck Sex Flick
Don’t ban Crash; ban cars
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City of Words: Introduction
Since 2022 City of Words has been a publishing house. But it began life in the 1990s as a column in The Guardian, a UK newspaper. The idea came from Liz Jobey, then The Guardian’s... more»
Car wars
The last thing I saw before I rolled the bike and fell in the path of an oncoming truck at Hyde Park Corner was the statue of the machine-gunner, a callipygous nude clasping a giant... more»
The whales of Nunavut
A jetliner on a transpolar night flight develops a mechanical fault. Forced to land in a snowstorm on an ice-bound landing strip, it touches down and taxis to a halt on the frozen runway. Crew... more»
Into the mystic
I’m drunk and you’re insane Who’s going to lead us home? It’s good to know, if you’ve been drinking, that a mystical poet is there with you in spirit, though he may have been dead... more»
Felling trees and eating chimpanzees
I’ve never eaten chimp. Probably you haven’t either. And as of this week there’s one more reason not to. Pan troglodytes, the chimpanzee, it appears from new research in Africa, may well be the original... more»
Look what they’ve done to my song, ma
Steal a lick. Or write your own. If you’re a song-writer you risk a lawsuit either way. As the lyricist... more»
Children at arms
In the 1980s the standard image to emerge from the world’s disaster zones was a skeletal child with despairing eyes, clutching the hand of an aid worker. This was soon to be displaced by another... more»
A Disneyland for dictators
We live in the twilight of the dictators. The military strongmen of South America are all gone. The big men of Africa are dying off, or repining in exile. Their replacements may be constrained by... more»
Kicking against the pips
Drifting down the aisles at the local Tesco, lulled to a trance by the saturated lighting, drunk in the arms of consumerism, I find myself in the fruit and veg section, absent-mindedly palpating a half-ripe... more»
The Labour party’s gay godfather
Gay-baiting political reporters at the Sun newspaper will have to dig harder to uncover the true roots of homosexual influence in the Labour party. This is because the party itself has largely forgotten them. Try... more»
