Humour
Seriously eccentric – Chaplin & Company by Mave Fellowes
Chaplin & Company is an alarming proposition for anyone with a low threshold for the cute and quirky. Its main character, Odeline Milk, is a mime artist. She is serious… Continue reading
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Alienation effect
‘To give you an idea of the way people here consume stories, I have put this book together as a human would’ writes the alien narrator of Matt Haig’s novel… Continue reading
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Fobbit by David Abrams – review
Fobbit, by David Abrams, is an attempt at describing a wartime tour from different perspectives, including soldiers and support personnel. Chapter by chapter our viewpoint rotates within this cast of… Continue reading
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Death Comes For The Poets by Matthew Sweeney and John Hartley Williams – review
Death Comes For The Poets is an unliterary book with a highly literary subject. It’s usually done the other way around: exquisite quodrilogies about American car salesmen; towering works about… Continue reading
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The Scots are more generous than the English. What a Red Nose Day joke
Scottish people are more generous than English people, contrary to the widely held belief that the Jocks are comically tight-fisted. A new study suggests that they are more likely to… Continue reading
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Shelf Life: Graydon Carter
Editor of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter, is this week’s Shelf Lifer. He reveals a predilection for Herman Wouk, an in depth knowledge of certain sections of the Eaton’s catalogue and… Continue reading
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The Fuhrer was not amused
‘The German sense of humour,’ Mark Twain famously observed, ‘Is no laughing matter.’ Although many Greeks, stretched on the Euro’s rack at Berlin’s behest, may be inclined to agree, Rudolph… Continue reading
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The Good Loo Guide
Funny the ways you can learn about a book. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones alerted me to one recently, 43 years after his death. I was at Somerset House… Continue reading
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Review: Zoo Time by Howard Jacobson
Winning the Booker can do strange things. For one, critics tend to become noticeably shyer around authors with some bling in their trophy cabinets, hyperbole blunting their edge. But if… Continue reading
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Three northern breakfasts
I’ve been in Scarborough, working on a story. Stayed in a perfectly nice hotel and this morning came down for my breakfast. I was greeted at the entrance to the… Continue reading
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Jeremy Vine’s survival guide
I first knew Jeremy Vine as a very young, charming, earnest and totally driven political correspondent for the BBC in the 1980s. So when I started reading It’s All News… Continue reading
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The fictional House of Lords
The House of Lords has yet again survived reform. ‘We have been discussing this issue for 100 years and it really is time to make progress,’ the Prime Minister said… Continue reading
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A knight’s tale
I can’t help thinking that the literary editor is having a little chuckle to himself, in his own private way, as he hands me Walking Home: Travels with a Troubadour… Continue reading
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Martin Amis and the underclass
New Martin Amis novels haven’t always received a fine reception of late. So much so that even tepid praise now reads generously. In the current magazine Philip Hensher reviews the… Continue reading
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Across the literary pages: Amis Asbo special
The promotional tour for Lionel Asbo: State of England has been suspiciously quiet. The fact that Martin Amis hasn’t sworn, bitched or nominated the queen as guinea pig for euthanasia booths… Continue reading
2 CommentsHappy birthday, Edward Lear
The god of nonsense, Edward Lear, is 200 years old this year. (Yes, the Inimitable can’t have the whole stage for himself, and must give way to another peculiarly English… Continue reading
9 CommentsEd Miliband volunteers for a kicking, gets kicked
"First he denies his own policy, then he tries insults." So said Ed Miliband of David Cameron’s performance in PMQs today. But I wonder what he’d say of the hundreds… Continue reading
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