It was a most fortuitous shipwreck. The S.S. Politician floundered on rocks near the island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides in February 1941, cutting short its journey from Liverpool to the USA. The hull was breached and the ship …
Why we can’t let Britpop die
It has been more than 30 years since Suede’s first single, The Drowners — slightly longer than the gap between that and the Beatles’ debut — but Britpop is having yet another moment. Blur have just announced two dates at …
Interview 1764 – One Nation Under Blackmail with Whitney Webb
Whitney Webb of UnlimitedHangout.com joins James once again, this time to discuss her new, epic, 900-page, two-volume tour de force, One Nation Under Blackmail. In this conversation, Webb and Corbett dive into the sordid tale of Epstein and his compatriots …
Bob Dylan has no philosophy
This is something special, obviously. Consider, for a moment, the author’s credentials. Pelé knows a lot about playing football, as does Floyd Mayweather about boxing, but do they have the chops to transfer their instinctive and acquired expertise into the …
What’s wrong with queerbaiting?
Years ago, I wrote reviews for the imaginatively titled Film Review. One of my fellow critics was another gay man, who automatically loathed all gay-themed films, sight unseen. His stance was simple and forcefully expressed: “It’s always awful.” And he …
Quentin Tarantino meets Bret Easton Ellis
For all their originality, Quentin Tarantino’s films have always been rooted in the Hollywood of his youth, pastiching and repurposing his earliest influences. Now, in his first work of non-fiction, Cinema Speculation, Tarantino returns to his influences, exploring the Seventies …
Cormac McCarthy’s irrational apocalypse
“When the onset of universal night is finally acknowledged as irreversible”, warns a character in The Passenger, “even the coldest cynic will be astonished at the celerity with which every rule and stricture shoring up this creaking edifice is abandoned …
Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska nightmare
In 1982, Bruce Springsteen was at the height of his powers. Seven years earlier, his third album, Born to Run, had brought him global fame. “Springsteen is everything that has been claimed for him,” declared Rolling Stone. Critic Dave Marsh …
How Eminem became a role model
The other day, I was pulled up short by a poster on the tube. I didn’t clock what it was advertising, but I was struck by the text: “Guess who’s back? Back again. Guess who’s back? Tell your friends.” It’s …
Don’t punish Kanye West
Some images of poor mental health from relatively recent films: in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a deeply traumatised teenage boy (Logan Lerman), who was sexually abused and suffered clinical depression, kisses a sparkly Emma Watson and stands up, …
Don’t fall for the Isis Matchmaker
I’ll never forget the moment I uncovered Umm Muthanna Al-Britannia’s real name. Back in early 2015, she was a brazen British propagandist and recruiter for the Islamic State. I’d been tracking her for months, almost marvelling at her shamelessness: she …
Lucian Freud is finally exposed
In late 1940, the 18-year-old Lucian Freud sent a series of highly decorated letters to the renowned poet and critic Stephen Spender. The pair had become fast friends and, despite their 12-year age gap, would later become lovers. In their …
American Gigolo is no longer sexy
Julian Kay is a thrillingly charming escort, as comfortable at international art auctions as he is on the pull-up bar. His speciality is older women, and when one asks him, in one of those old hotel restaurant booths so cushioned …
The twilight of the Disney princess
On Sunday, as hundreds of thousands queued to see the mortal remains of our Queen lying in state, I stood in a shorter queue, to see a different queen in the flesh. The occasion was my daughter’s long-planned birthday excursion …
Why artists sell out
“I’m not green-lighting anything I don’t understand,” says Barry Lapidus, a studio executive at Paramount Pictures. “We’re going to stop developing these rarefied flights of fancy and start applying some good business sense to what we do here.”
This dialogue …