A S H Smyth

From deer park to gun park… . Sixteen years ago, American and British forces hurled themselves into Afghanistan the same week I arrived at Magdalen College, Oxford. I didn’t give them much thought – although the ‘War on Terror’ was immediately everywhere. I had an Egyptology degree to get to grips with; and choral evensong […]

A blog piece for Culture House on the Royal Naval mobilisation of the Rev Wilfrid Hannay Gibbins, and the parish mags of a church in West London over the course of the First World War. — For The Spectator

A disquisition on the balletic arts at the Rugby World Cup 2011. — For theartsdesk

The Gratiaen Prize 2009 The Gratiaen Prize – for those of you not up on your South Asian literary gongs – is an annual award given to Sri Lankan writers for creative writing in English, f(o)unded in 1993 by Michael Ondaatje, with his English Patient Booker winnings. Writing-in-English is a small crowd here – ‘here’ […]

Crazies ban music in Mogadishu (and the Somali ‘government’ attempts to ban the ban). For The First Post.