Last autumn, I finally read a book I’d put off reading for years because I suspected (rightly, it turns out) that it would be uniquely harrowing. Jonathan Littell’s notorious, extremely long novel of the Second World War, The Kindly Ones, …
George Michael’s longing for oblivion
A rumour was born the last time my group Decius were out on the road.
If you linger long enough in Berghain’s Panorama bar, if you remain until Monday morning when the sun is back up, occasionally they’ll open the …
Annie Ernaux: queen of the suburbs
Think Milton Keynes, with touches of Harlow, Stevenage or Crawley. Its location in relation to the capital, though, plants the town closer to Watford, even Slough. You might just about imagine a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature growing …
All revolutionaries are selfish
I was recommended Germinal, Zola’s masterpiece about the mining strikes in northern France in 1866, by a friend, a writer I admire and respect. We were talking about the temptation to stay in our narrative comfort zones, to continually write …
