Please join me in a new blog venture, Hooray for Dead White Males, an occasional series in which I attempt…
Rita Reviewed
In which I return to my old stomping ground of Wellington, and review Rita, the city’s hottest new restaurant. One…
Joining the Club
15 August 2016 London My review of A Question of Upbringing, the first Anthony Powell’s twelve-volume novel series A Dance…
Letter to a Brexiteer
Dear Lizzie It was certainly a shock, reading on Facebook that you’d voted for Brexit. A mutual friend told me…
Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves
14 June 2016 London Barack Obama has called the Orlando shooting a “hate crime” against the LGBTQ community. For LGBTQ…
Women Take Back the Write
19 May 2016 London Is feminism dead in the UK? This month’s Something Rhymed Literary Salon series re-opens a much-needed debate about…
Alas, Poor Cumbers
15 August 2015 London Thespian totty du jour Benedict Cumberbatch is the latest high-profile actor to play Hamlet in a…
It Is So Ordered
27 June 2015 Moncontour, Poitou-Charentes, France There aren’t many mornings where I wake up crying. This morning was one of them. On…
Not Far From the Middling Crowd
16 May 2015 London The BBC and Thomas Vinterberg’s prettified adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel Far From the Madding Crowd fails…
Diff’rent Strokes
8 March 2015 London Fifty Shades of Grey continues a well-worn and lucrative literary tradition of bad writing about kinky…