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JP O'Malley rss

The Sun Sets Behind The Houses Of Parliament

Michael Sandel interview: the marketization of everything is undermining democracy

22 May 2013 9:41

Michael Sandel is a political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his  ‘Justice’ course, which he has taught for over two decades. Sandel first… Continue reading

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Jared Cohen, co-author, with Eric Schmidt, of 'The New Digital Age'.

Interview: Jared Cohen and The New Digital Age

8 May 2013 11:29

Jared Cohen is Director of Google Ideas, a think tank set up by Google dedicated to understanding global challenges by applying technological solutions. Cohen is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow… Continue reading

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A woman campaigns for the taxing of rich people at an Occupy protest. Picture: Getty.

Interview: David Graeber, leading figure of Occupy

3 May 2013 9:00

The anarchist movement in the United States has had the support of leading libertarian intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky; but it has lacked a figure who could transform its guiding… Continue reading

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The sun sets over the river Liffey in Dublin. (BARRY CRONIN/AFP/Getty Images)

Interview with a writer: Kevin Maher

5 April 2013 10:30

Kevin Maher’s debut novel The Fields is set in the suburban streets of south Dublin in 1984. The story is narrated by Jim Finnegan: an innocent 13-year-old boy who lives… Continue reading

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John Banville's The Sea wins the 2005 Booker Prize. (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

Interview with a writer: John Banville

29 March 2013 11:00

The salubrious surroundings of the Waldorf Hotel seem like a very apt setting to interview a master of style and sophistication. When I arrive in the lobby, John Banville is… Continue reading

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Should we be worried if Google rules the world?

Interview with a writer: Jaron Lanier

22 March 2013 9:30

In his new book, Who Owns The Future?, computer scientist, Jaron Lanier, argues that as technology has become more advanced, so too has our dependency on information tools. Lanier believes that… Continue reading

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Papuan tribal warriors from Karang Senang village armed with bows and arrows prepare to attack the neighboring Harapan village after two Karang Senang tribesmen were killed in the raging tribal war in Mimika town located in Indonesia's restive Papua province. Authorities effort to mediate between the warring tribes have failed as violence erupted in 2012. (TJAHJONO ERANIUS/AFP/GettyImages)

Interview with a writer: Jared Diamond

1 March 2013 10:55

In his latest book The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond analyses the behavioral differences between human beings in tribal stateless-societies and those living in bureaucratic nation states. Diamond says that if… Continue reading

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The Silence of Animals hi res

Interview with a writer: John Gray

22 February 2013 9:59

In his new book The Silence of Animals, the philosopher John Gray explores why human beings continue to use myth to give purpose to their lives. Drawing from the material… Continue reading

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Neil Shubin says that life has an internal clock that is governed by the rotation of the Earth and the cycle of the tides. Image: Getty.

Interview with a writer: Professor Neil Shubin

15 February 2013 12:26

Following in the footsteps of the great tradition of paleontologists like Stephen Jay Gould, and evolutionary biologists such as Ernst Mayr, Neil Shubin, professor in the Department of Organismal Biology… Continue reading

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President Barack Obama presents John Ashbery with a National Arts and Humanities Medal in February 2012. Image: Getty

Interview with a writer: John Ashbery

1 February 2013 9:30

John Ashbery is recognized as one of the most eminent American poets of the twentieth-century. He also been called America’s greatest living poet today. Ashbery published his first book of… Continue reading

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For John Burnside, happiness can be found in simple pleasures like a cup of coffee or a walk in the snow. Image: Getty.

Interview with a writer: John Burnside

18 January 2013 11:50

It’s Friday at 10am in a remote field in Fife. John Burnside is taking his morning walk, whilst simultaneously attempting to conduct a conversation with me down a dodgy telephone… Continue reading

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Kofi Annan

Interview: Kofi Annan

17 January 2013 15:46

Kofi Annan is discussing his extraordinary career with William Shawcross this evening, but for those Spectator readers who weren’t able to get tickets, he has also spoken to JP O’Malley… Continue reading

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Israeli militiamen operate outside Jerusalem during the 1948 war. Image: Getty

Yoram Kaniuk, reluctant soldier in 1948

11 January 2013 10:00

Yoram Kaniuk was born in Tel Aviv in 1930. After his experience in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, Kaniuk moved to New York where he became a painter in Greenwich… Continue reading

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The railways and the past are recurring themes of Sean O'Brien's frequently political but never preachy poetry. Image: Getty

Sean O’ Brien: Poetry is political, all writing is political

14 December 2012 11:55

Sean O’ Brien was born in London in 1952. Shortly afterwards, he moved to Hull, where he grew up, thus firmly cementing an allegiance to the North of England: a… Continue reading

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Time Magazine's spiel prompts the question, how useful is the Freedom of Information Act against the machinery of the secret State? Image: Getty

Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain

23 November 2012 17:41

In his new book Classified: Secrecy and The State In Modern Britain, Dr Christopher Moran gives an account of the British state’s long obsession with secrecy, and the various methods… Continue reading

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A wrecked Pontiac, one of the items displayed in J.G. Ballard's 'The Atrocity Exhibition'. Image: Getty.

Meeting J.G. Ballard

20 November 2012 19:00

In the programme Frost on Interviews that was recently rebroadcasted by BBC Four, the distinguished journalist, David Frost, attempted to understand what makes a compelling interview. Frost’s programme concentrated primarily… Continue reading

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Wole Soyinka has told the Spectator that Boko Haram, the Islamist group in Nigeria, must be 'destroyed'. Image: Getty

Wole Soyinka: Boko Haram must be destroyed

18 November 2012 17:16

Born in 1934 in Nigeria, Wole Soyinka is the author of more than twenty plays, ten volumes of poetry, two novels, seven collections of essays and five autobiographical works. He… Continue reading

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Actors rehearsing a scene from Dante's 'Inferno'. Sharon Olds' fear of hell as a child continues inform so much of her poetry. Image: Getty.

Sharon Olds’ fear and self-loathing

9 November 2012 12:36

Since the publication of her debut collection, Satan Says in 1980, which was awarded the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award, Sharon Olds has become a prominent – and controversial… Continue reading

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Ciaron Carson tells us that the inscrutable Rimbaud is 'all analogy'. Image: Getty

Interview: Ciaran Carson on translating Rimbaud

2 November 2012 12:02

Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast in 1948, and published his first book of poetry, The New Estate, in 1976. Fans of Carson had to wait eleven years for his… Continue reading

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Cult author Mike McCormack talks to the Spectator about technology and the influence of J.G. Ballard on his short stories.

Cult status: an interview with Mike McCormack

26 October 2012 11:28

Mike McCormack published his first book of short stories Getting it in the Head in 1996. The debut earned him the Rooney Prize for Literature, and was chosen as a… Continue reading

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