Carlos Acosta, the great dancer, should be a full-time novelist
2 November 2013
Pig’s Foot Carlos Acosta, translated by Frank Wynne
Carlos Acosta, the greatest dancer of his generation, grew up in Havana as the youngest of 11 black children. Money was tight, but Carlos won a place at ballet school,… Read more
Italo Calvino’s essays, Collection of Sand, is a brainy delight
26 October 2013
Collection of Sand: Essays Italo Calvino translated by Martin McLaughlin
The Japanese are sometimes said to suffer from ‘outsider person shock’ (gaijin shokku) when travelling abroad. Recently in London we had a lodger from Hiroshima who wanted to practise his… Read more
Stephen King isn’t as scary as he used to be, but ‘Doctor Sleep’ is still a cracker
5 October 2013
Doctor Sleep Stephen King
Though alcohol withdrawal is potentially fatal, booze has none of the media-confected glitz of heroin (imagine Will Self boasting of a Baileys Bristol Cream addiction). The 17th-century word for the…Read more
Mr Loverman, by Bernardine Evaristo – review
14 September 2013
Mr Loverman Bernadine Evaristo
In 1998, the Jamaican singer Bounty Killer released a single, ‘Can’t Believe Mi Eyes’, which expressed incredulity that men should wear tight trousers, because tight trousers are an effeminate display…Read more
An Armenian Sketchbook, by Vasily Grossman – review
17 August 2013
An Armenian Sketchbook Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler
Vasily Grossman, a Ukranian-born Jew, was a war correspondent for the Soviet army newspaper Red Star. His dispatches from the front between 1941 and 1945 combined emotional engagement with independent-minded… Read more
A Trip to Echo Spring, by Olivia Laing – review
10 August 2013
The Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink Olivia Laing
The boozer’s life is one of low self-esteem and squalid self-denial. It was memorably evoked by Charles Jackson in his 1944 novel The Lost Weekend; having hocked his typewriter for… Read more
Inferno, by Dan Brown – review
25 May 2013
Inferno Dan Brown
The other day, while shopping in Tesco, I was surprised to find copies of the Inferno for sale by the checkout. ‘Oh dear’, I declared, ‘who would have thought of… Read more
‘The Making of a Minister’, by Roy Kerridge
20 April 2013
The Making of a Minister Roy Kerridge
Back in the 1960s, England was a bad disappointment to many West Indians. In the grey city streets with their scruffy, bay-fronted houses they looked for somewhere to live. Many… Read more
‘Well Done God!: Selected Prose and Drama of B.S. Johnson’, edited by Jonathan Coe – review
6 April 2013
Well Done God!: Selected Prose and Drama of B.S. Johnson Jonathan Coe (ed)
B.S. Johnson railed intemperately at life, but in his fiction at least he found a lugubrious comedy in human failings. In 1973, aged 40, he killed himself by slashing his… Read more
‘Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England’, by Neil McKenna – review
9 March 2013
Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England Neil McKenna
Mick Jagger, the Danny La Rue of rock, impersonates a woman on the cover of the 1978 Stones album Some Girls. Vaudeville performers in the Jagger mould love to put… Read more
26 January 2013
World War Two: A Short History Norman Stone
Adolf Hitler considered jazz a ‘racially inferior’ form of American black music, and banned it from the airwaves. Germany’s gilded youth flouted the prohibition by playing Duke Ellington in secret… Read more
Erratic historian of alternative pop
8 December 2012
Copendium: An Expedition into theRock’n’Roll Underworld Julian Cope
Julian Cope, the well-read jester of English pop, was the founder member of the 1980s art-rock combo The Teardrop Explodes. With his antic appearance (Rommel overcoat, wild tawny hair), he… Read more
