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Tag Archives: Oscar Wilde

‘It is the living we should fear’

Sunday, March 29, 2020

DISCLAIMER: Ten years ago, I reviewed Shehan Karunatilaka’s debut novel, Chinaman, for this newspaper. It was brilliant, I said, and everyone should buy it. I noted, though, for form’s sake, that I’d done some light proofreading of the manuscript, and hoped that this would not be taken either as cause or symptom of inoperable bias. […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged BBC, children, Colombo, Commonwealth Book Prize, cousins, cricket, death, DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, Elvis Presley, Gratiaen Award, Herodotus, independence, Marlon James, Marxism, Michael Ondaatje, Nietzsche, novels, pangolins, Penguin India, photography, Richard de Zoysa, Shehan Karunatilaka, Singlish, Sinhala, Sri Lanka, Sunday Times (SL), The Mahavamsa, The Matrix, war, Wisden | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, September 30, 2019

. Football was a crime in England during the reign of Henry VIII. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Tuesday, October 2 1906 . The moon is up for longer than the sun. Your antivirus expires in 29 days. The Dogmata Theologica of Petavius are a work of incredible labour and compass. The steep limestone walls of a […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged America, anatomy, astronomy, books, eggs, England, expectoration, football, geology, health, Henry VIII, homosexuality, humanity, law, money, Nelson Evening Mail, pachyderms, Petavius, religion, Russians, satire, scholarship, Sri Lanka, the Chinese, university, war | Comments (0)

Did The English Patient send me to Afghanistan?

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Two nights from now, by way of (ahem) a birthday present, I will be attending a live-orchestra screening of The English Patient at the Albert Hall. I had invited an old friend, a raven-haired young lady (named in Debrett’s) of impossibly romantic tendency, who first exposed me to the film in, I’d say, about 1998 […]

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Academy Awards, Afghanistan, Ahmed Hassanein, air travel, American University in Cairo, anatomy, Anthony Minghella, Arabic, army, Banana Republic, bedouin, Benny Goodman, Booker Prize, books, bookshops, Brighton, Bruce Chatwin, Byron, Canada, Charing Cross Road, Christopher Hitchens, clothing, Debrett's, deserts, Dorset, Egypt, Egyptology, exploration, film, French Foreign Legion, Gabriel Yared, Geoff Dyer, Geographical, Geographical Journal, Herodotus, Hungarian, Hungary, JM Coetzee, John Ball, John Hare, Joseph Conrad, Justin Marozzi, Kensington Gore, Kristen Scott Thomas, László Almásy, London, Long Range Desert Group, Lorenz Hart, love, Michael Ondaatje, mountains, music, novels, Orientalism, Oxford, Picador, plums, Ralph Bagnold, Ralph Fiennes, Ranulph Fiennes, Richard Bermann, Robert Twigger, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Geographical Society, Saul Kelly, Sinai, SOE, song, South Africa, the Himalayas, the Nile, The Oldie, the Sahara, the Western Desert, war, WG Sebald, William Golding, wind, women, WW2, YouTube, Zerzura | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, March 12, 2018

. The average salary of professors at Dublin University is £530. — The Nelson Evening Mail, March 14 1907 . Wherever there is a fire that ravages everything in its path, the protea is the first thing to regenerate. Clive James once voluntarily interviewed the Spice Girls. Manchester has become ‘Womanchester’. Cineworld has landed in […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged academia, America, army, bowls, Cineworld, Clive James, domestic affairs, Donald Trump, drink, Dublin, education, Elon Musk, employment, engineering, film, finance, flora, Journalism, Kanye West, law, Manchester, music, Nelson Evening Mail, nomenclature, pastry, retirement, South Africa, space travel, technology, the Congo, the Spice Girls, Um Bongo, university, Weston-super-Mare, women, work | Comments (0)

Turning Japanese stomachs

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima Penguin, 170pp, £8.99 . Born two years after the Great Earthquake of 1923, in ‘not too good a section of Tokyo’, Kochan is a sickly child, brought up by stultifying parents and a morbid grandmother. His first reliable memory is of the ‘night-soil’ man, and he immediately becomes […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged army, autobiography, education, Guido Reni, homosexuality, Japan, JK Huysmans, Joan of Arc, Magnus Hirschfeld, Nobel Prize for Literature, novels, sex, suicide, The Amorist, transvestism, violence, war, WW2, Yukio Mishima | Comments (0)

The Top Fifteen Or So Wittiest Oscar Wilde Quotes – according to his Twitter output (last 24hrs)

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

1) ‘Think tattoos have to be bold and dark? Think again! Check out these stunning white ink tats!’ 2) ‘You can’t get your childhood back but you can recreate it! Check out these awesome recreation photos.’ 3) ‘Wanna see a real-life Barbie doll? This is not Photoshopped! You’ve gotta see this to believe it’ 4) […]

Filed in Non-fictions | Also tagged Barbie, foxes, girlfriends, humour, kissing, marriage, men, Miley Cyrus, Morrissey, New York Jets, photography, Photoshop, piercings, pregnancy, tattoos, Taylor Swift, technology, the internet, The Pikey Laureate, women | Comments (0)

theASHtray, vol.8

Saturday, March 24, 2012

This week starring Stanley Donwood, Radiohead, Vincent Van Gogh, The Wind-Up Merchant, Ric Jerrom, Oscar Wilde, Tony Hawks, Ireland, fridges, Guinness, extras, Tom Crean, Antarctic exploration, Felicity Aston, product placement, Land Rovers, Mark Ronson, Newsnight, the Olympics, Michaelangelo, and an infantile joke about muff-diving. — For theartsdesk

Filed in column, Journalism | Also tagged extras, Felicity Aston, fridges, Guinness, Ireland, Land Rover, Mark Ronson, Michaelangelo, Newsnight, Olympics, Radiohead, Ric Jerrom, Stanley Donwood, the Antarctic, The Wind-Up Merchant, theartsdesk, Tom Crean, Tony Hawks, Vincent Van Gogh | Comments (0)