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Faux Amis? Or, the art of the nonvel

Friday, October 9, 2020

Inside Story: a novel / How to Write By Martin Amis Jonathan Cape £20 . It is traditionally ‘not done’ to review books in terms of what they’re not. And yet: this book is not a novel. It says it is on the front cover; but it isn’t. And Martin Amis makes it clear it’s […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged 9/11, Amazon, autobiography, Christopher Hitchens, Clive James, criticism, death, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Jane Howard, food, Germany, James Fenton, Jonathan Cape, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, Mystic Meg, Nabokov, nonvels, Philip Larkin, pilates, publishing, Robert Conquest, rugby, Salman Rushdie, Saul Bellow, sex, Solzhenitsyn, terrorism, the Gulag, the Holocaust, The New Yorker, The Oldie | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 1, 2019

. There are now about 54,000 Chinese coolies in the Transvaal gold mines. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, March 14 1907 . Los Angeles is a lousy, boring little town. A European could die there from boredom. January ain’t about the blues. Piers Morgan is sick. The veins of Englishmen flow with rainwater. In a land […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Andy Murray, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cana, Chernobyl, crime, death, deer, Dominic Hilton, drink, Englishmen, Europeans, fathers, gold, health, hobbies, homosexuality, January, Los Angeles, marriage, men, money, Nelson Evening Mail, philosophy, Piers Morgan, rain, Sellafield, sex, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the Chinese, the West, women | Comments (0)

Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy Bluffer’s Guide

Monday, June 4, 2018

Last weekend I played host to a particularly friendly cricket match – by which I mean that both teams had no clue what they were doing. The opposition, Rain Men, were captained by my friend and usual team-mate Simon, whose excuse was that he’d only played the game 263 times previously. The other captain was, […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged beer, Bluffer's Guides, Boris Starling, cats, conversation, cricket, cycling, Duckworth Lewis, Englishmen, etiquette, fishing, footnotes, Fuller Pilch, girlfriends, golf, Harry Eyres, Haynes Publishing, humour, James Trollope, Jonathan Goodall, Keith Hann, leadership, management, Marcus Berkmann, Mike Brearley, Nick Yapp, opera, Rain Men, Samuel Johnson, Serbo-Croat, social media, South Africans, Susie Boniface, Test Match Special, The Oldie, Town Malling, William Hanson, wine, wisdom | Comments (0)

Tripping hither, tripping thither

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

When I went to the bar as a very young man, it was often enough in the company of the Oxford University Gilbert & Sullivan Society. My relationship with G&S had started early, specifically the argument in Three Men in a Boat over which song Harris is trying to sing (I remain confused to this […]

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged All Souls College, Arcadia, Bletchingdon, clowns, comedy, Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907, donkeys, drink, English National Opera, fairies, food, French, G Schirmer, Greek, Grenadier Guards, Holywell Music Room, Iolanthe, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Jerome K Jerome, Kazakhstan, ketamine, Latin, law, librettos, Mount Ararat, music, opera, Oxford University, Oxford University Gilbert & Sullivan Society, plebs, politics, Richard D'Oyly Carte, Savoy Theatre, sex, shepherds, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Sir William Schwenk Gilbert, the Conservative Party, the House of Lords, the Liberal Party, The Oldie, The West Wing, voice, women | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, September 18, 2017

. Our Eastern allies have just spent £2,000,000 in equipping a Government steel works. — The Nelson Evening Mail, September 8 1908 . Ben Stokes is the sixth Englishman to have his name on the honours boards at Lord’s for both batting and bowling. The smell of hot food is not very common on building sites. Annalise was […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Afrikaners, America, Anne Watson, arachnids, Australians, Ben Stokes, Benjamin Britten, cricket, death, drink, finance, food, government, hair, Iceland, Leonard Bernstein, life, London, Lord's, manufacturing, Neighbours, Nelson Evening Mail, opera, penises, Peter Grimes, Reading, Sebastian Faulks, South Africa, steel, the Bible, the Chinese, the EU, the Irish, the NHS, the Nile, train-travel, TV, work | Comments (0)