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Category Archives: Journalism

Feats of Klay

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Redeployment By Phil Klay (Canongate, 291pp, £15) ‘Nobody wants to do a year in Iraq’, mutters one of the narrators in Phil Klay’s Redeployment, ‘and come back with nothing but stories about the soft-serve ice-cream machine at the embassy cafeteria.’ No kidding. And Klay (rhymes with ‘guy’) will not have been the first soldier, American […]

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Good show(?)! – Mozart Undone

Monday, February 24, 2014

His circus-like extravaganzas have sliced and diced The Beatles, played fast and loose with Bob Dylan, and spawned successful imitations across the theatre scene in his native Denmark. Now the gleefully wilful director-cum-ringmaster Nikolaj Cederholm brings his trademark ‘theatre concert’ to London’s Barbican, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s temporary residence in the British […]

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Pieces of ‘im

Friday, February 14, 2014

Music-type interview with celebrity-portraitist Rich Hardcastle. — For Sinfini Music

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Two Years At Sea

Friday, May 4, 2012

Anger-provoking art-house documentary about a guy who gets up to so little they don’t even bother to tell us his name (reviewed). — For theartsdesk

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Cymbeline (in Arabic)

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Yesterday’s Globe theatre retelling of the Cymbeline story opened – or at least appeared to open – with the entire cast contributing their 2p-worth on the issue of what the story of Cymbeline actually was. And fair dos. A ‘late’ and abnormally tortuous Shakespearean number, Cymbeline seems not only to have been constructed out of […]

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theASHtray, vol.13

Saturday, April 28, 2012

David Walliams does Roald Dahl, AA Gill does Mary Beard, and I do children’s literature, Little Britain, Donald Sturrock, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Sunday Times, Romans, the Daily Mail, Cicero, Bettany Hughes, Time Team, the Cambridge Latin Course, constipation, movie posters, The Ides of March, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The English Patient, […]

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theASHtray, vol.12

Saturday, April 21, 2012

A trenchant critique of all things Israel-Palestine – starring Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Helena Bonham Carter – Ricky Gervais, retardations, Karl Pilkington, Channel 4, nurses, Gladiator, Star Wars, Leon, Madame Tussauds, Marvel, Shrek, Hamlet, Tom Phillips (RA), Lord of the Rings, Orhan Pamuk, museums, cabinets of curiosity, Istanbul, A Serbian Film, Daniel […]

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La Fille du régiment

Friday, April 20, 2012

Donizetti’s silliness at the ROH, reviewed. — For theartsdesk

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Town of Runners

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Documentary on what’s in the water in the distance-running capital of the world: Bekoji, Ethiopia. (Reviewed.) — For theartsdesk

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Navel-gazing, with Pamela Stephenson

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Review of More4’s Pamela Stephenson: The Fame Report. — For theartsdesk

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