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Tag Archives: Russell Crowe

Strength and honour

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

A love letter to 20 years of watching Gladiator. — For The Critic

Filed in column, Journalism | Also tagged Academy Awards, Alain de Botton, army, Classics, Cleopatra, Commodus, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, drink, Edward Gibbon, Facebook, film, Germans, Hans Zimmer, Harry Sidebottom, history, Holst, Jesus, Julius Caesar, Kent, Loeb Classical Library, love, Marcus Aurelius, Moravia, Morocco, music, Nick Cave, Odeon, Oxford, painting, religion, Rich Hardcastle, Ridley Scott, Rome, Royal Albert Hall, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Suffolk, Surrey, tattoos, The Critic, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts, war, YouTube | Comments (0)

I ink, therefore I am

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

On the choice and acquisition of my one and only tattoo. — For The Oldie

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Afghanistan, Anthony McGowan, army, Asterix, buffalos, Classics, Cleopatra, Egyptology, Elizabeth Taylor, gladiators, Greek, Latin, men, mothers, opera, Oxford, Rome, Samoan, sewerage, South Africa, SPQR, tattoos, The Oldie, war | Comments (0)

Flak Jacket to Dust Jacket

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Men at War: What Fiction Tells Us About Conflict, from The Iliad to Catch-22 By Christopher Coker (Hurst 325pp £25) My Life as a Foreign Country By Brian Turner (Jonathan Cape 240pp £16.99) Seamus Heaney once remarked upon the heroes of antiquity that it is ‘not so much their procedures on the page which are […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged America, Brian Turner, Christopher Coker, film, Homer, Iraq, Literary Review, literature, London School of Economics, memoir, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Vietnam, war | Comments (0)

Interview(ed)

Thursday, June 9, 2011

(for the British School in Colombo yearbook 2010/11) 1. So, what’s with the beard? After I graduated from the War Studies Faculty at KCL I rather fancied myself as a war correspondent, so I grew the beard. Then I just rather fancied myself. 2. We somehow get the impression that you are always very sarcastic […]

Filed in Fictions, interview | Also tagged Alexander (‘the Great’), Amazonian tribesmen, Arthur Rimbaud, beards, Beethoven, books, Bruce Chatwin, Chooties, Christopher Hitchens, cynicism, Dr Gregory House, Dr Hannibal Lecter, Geoff Dyer, GF Handel, Helen DeWitt, Jacques Kallis, Jeffrey Barnard, Jim Morrison, JM Coetzee, John Nash, John Wilmot 2nd Earl of Rochester, literature, Lydia Davis, Margaret Atwood, Maurice Bowra, PE instructors, Peter O’Toole, Philip Seymour Hoffman, piano, Radiohead, Roald Dahl, school, sex, singing, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Sri Lanka, TE Lawrence, teaching, Thom Yorke, Toby Ziegler, university, War Studies, Wendy Cope, WG Sebald, Yasmina Reza | Comments (0)