Review of Andrew Fidel Fernando’s debut book Upon a Sleepless Isle, which has just won Sri Lanka’s Gratiaen Prize (2019) for English-language literature. — For The Critic
Filed in Journalism, review
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Also tagged Andrew Fidel Fernando, Anuradhapura, beards, beer, Booker Prize, children, Colombo, colonialism, cricket, elephants, ESPNCricinfo, Gratiaen Prize, humour, Jaffna, John Still, Kandy, LTTE, Michael Ondaatje, Minneriya, New Zealand, Nuwara Eliya, Picador India, Polonnaruwa, Shehan Karunatilaka, Sigiriya, Sri Lanka, tea, the British, The Critic, the Victorians, tourism, travel, tuktuks, Uva Rebellion, writers
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As Colombo emerges from the Covid lockdown, I go immediately to one of my favourite places. — For The Critic
Filed in correspondence, Journalism
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Also tagged Alfred Douglas, Andre Gide, Arthur C Clarke, bibliomania, books, bookshops, Borges, Ceylon, coconuts, Colombo, colonialism, Covid-19, Craig Raine, Cyril Connolly, David Blacker, David Kugultinov, David Nichol Smith, Dee Brown, Dervla Murphy, Dickens, Edmund Waller, education, EM Forster, fauna, Georges Bataille, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Harold Nicolson, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Joan Collins, Joseph Conrad, Kalmykia, Lenin, libraries, Lionel Shriver, Louis Mountbatten, Madeleine Albright, Maradana, Michael Ondaatje, Nabokov, Peter Ackroyd, Richard Flanagan, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sinhala, Sri Lanka, Tamil, Teilhard de Chardin, The Critic, the Duke of Pirajno, The New Yorker, Tom Wolfe
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. There are more kilts in London than in Scotland. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, May 9 1907 . At 45% of the population, white Christians are a shrinking demographic in America. Hermal eggings are so leek. No sensitive person would choose to be the historian of the Irish asylums in the first part of the […]
Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE
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Also tagged America, children, clothing, drink, ducks, food, goldfish, health, Hegel, history, holidays, humour, London, madness, Nelson Evening Mail, new, politics, religion, Rioja, Robert Southey, Russia, satire, Scotland, Smak, Spinoza, the Irish, WG Grace
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. We call our day 24 hours, but it is really 23 hours 56 minutes 5 seconds. — The Nelson Evening Mail, September 28 1906 . ‘Facetious’ is the shortest word in the English language including all the vowels in alphabetical order. The English theatre loves the joker. Samuel Beckett notched up 35 runs in first-class cricket. UK funeral directors are […]
Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE
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Also tagged America, anatomy, baking, californium, comedy, cricket, death, education, fishing, funeral directors, gun violence, JR Ewing, mackerel, men, money, murder, music, Nelson Evening Mail, republicanism, Ross Brown, Samuel Beckett, singing, the pentatonic scale, the UK, theatre, time, torture, Uzbekistan, vowels, weather, work
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Tuesday, December 12, 2017
A festive gripe about Cornelius’s lovely ‘Three Kings‘ – and the solo I have never got to sing in it. — For The Oldie
Filed in correspondence, Journalism
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Also tagged Alexandra Coghlan, All Saints Maidstone, baritones, barristers, Bayreuth, BBC Books, carols, cellos, Christmas, Christmas Badger Singers, Franz Liszt, Gerald Finley, German, Germans, girlfriends, Hampton Court, HN Bate, Ivor Atkins, King's College London, Knightsbridge, men, music, Oxford University, Peter Cornelius, Radio 3, silk, singing, Smarden, Southwark Cathedral, Sri Lanka, The Judd School, The Oldie, translation, University of St Andrews, YouTube
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Monday, February 13, 2017
. The honorary freedom of the borough of Rye in Sussex confers upon the freemen the privilege of kissing the mayoress. — The Nelson Evening Mail, March 21 1907 . When you register your child at birth, it immediately becomes the legal property of the state. In WW2 German physicists were able to discern the […]
Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE
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Also tagged Anthony McGowan, Bowling Green, Brian Moore, butterflies, campanology, children, death, drink, Germans, girlfriends, golf, Inverness, kangaroos, manicures, musicals, Nelson Evening Mail, OED, officialdom, physics, radio, Samuel Beckett, sex, Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, snakes, Sussex, Thailand, the Dutch, work, WW2
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Tuesday, December 1, 2015
‘Some bread, some butter, and green cheese’ is as good in England as it is in Frisia. — * from a synthetic translation exercise by John McWhorter
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Have you read Humorous Elements in the Short Stories and Novels of the Southern Writer Eudora Welty … in German? Ja, Darling! — * a (reverse) translation of Jonathan Williams’ ‘A Subtle Mississippian Riposte (for L.Z.)’ in Louis Zukofsky, or whoever someone else thought he was: a collection of responses to the work of Louis […]
Filed in Poetry, Translation
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Also tagged America, Eudora Welty, German, Harry Gilonis, humour, Jonathan Williams, Louis Zukofsky, Mississippi, novels, short stories
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Tuesday, January 13, 2015
What I would like to say by way of introduction to my essays on the art of writing, by A.B.C.D.E.F. Godthaab* (* Bear with me, please, while I endeavour to explain what is going on here.) . Twelve years ago, I wrote, with considerable emotional anguish, a long novel about a war against the languages. […]
Filed in Fictions, Translation
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Also tagged bats, dogs, fina, fruit, Greenland, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Kierkegaard, McSweeney's, Portobello Books, publishers, sci-fi, Swedish, tractors, translation, writing
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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 […]
Filed in feature, interview, Journalism
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Also tagged Adrian Edmondson, Beethoven, Betty Nansen Teatret, Blackadder, Bob Dylan, Chekhov, Darwin, Denmark, Dolly Parton, German, insanity, Italian, Jens Hellemann, JMW Turner, Lady Gaga, Lloyd Webber, Mandela, Mozart, Mumford & Sons, music, Neill Cardinal Furio, Nikolaj Cederholm, Old Testament, Paganini, Peter Hellemann, Red Hot Chili Peppers, rock, Shakespeare, Stanley Kubrick, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, theatre, war
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