It is odd to be knocked sideways by the death of someone who is 100 years old, and yet Ronnie Blythe’s departure last weekend has come as a shock. The friendship of Ronnie was compared by his friend a fellow-writer Roger Deakin to an old oak – something that always seemed to have been there,… Continue reading Ronnie Blythe: the death of a tribal storyteller
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Just now and then, life throws up a character who turns out to be a sort of Rorschach Test of public taste – someone who, like the famous inkblot, can prompt reactions which reveal deeper psychological truths. Usually these Rorschach characters are obvious – Johnson, Trump, Nadine Dorries – but sometimes there are surprise candidates.… Continue reading We Need to Talk About Meghan. What exactly did she do wrong?
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As the World Cup unfolds, we hear every day about how football spills into the wider world – into politics, into the way people think and feel. It’s a symbol of something, we’re told, or a metaphor for something else. It’s far more significant than 22 men chasing a ball around. Normally I would be… Continue reading The moral harm of Michael Beale
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The working life of a professional writer is not exciting. You write. You read what you have written. You sigh. You try again until, with luck, something passable appears on the page or screen before you. Now and then – again, with luck – you get published. Rows or bust-ups in the little world of… Continue reading ‘Play nicely, children,’ said the Society of Authors …. They didn’t.
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If writers and musicians have a token bird that symbolises what they do, it is not, however much they may like it to be, a nightingale, a skylark or a peacock. It’s a magpie. We are all, while writing, scavenging around for something shiny and brilliant from the past to take back to our own… Continue reading TIP FOR SONGWRITERS – YOU’VE GOT TO PICK A POCKET OR TWO
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The words in this headline were emailed to me a few years back, shortly after the death of Bob Hope. At the time, I was writing a twice-weekly opinion column for the Independent, and I had devoted one of these to the memory of the grinning funny man. It was not a fond eulogy. I… Continue reading ‘YOU, SIR, ARE AN ABSOLUTE SHIT’
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Predictably, inevitably, the great novelist Philip Roth is now receiving the full Updike treatment. He has become ‘problematic’. His novels should ‘recontextualised’. He is on the wrong side of Me Too. It has been a few years now since that tide turned for John Updike. One moment he was a much-loved adornment of the literary… Continue reading PHILIP ROTH – JUST ANOTHER PENIS WITH A THESAURUS?
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One revelation in last week’s Oprah Winfrey interview with the Runaway Royals was so startling that even I, who doesn’t give much of damn for any of them, was rather intrigued. It was claimed by Prince Harry that what is known as ‘the royal household’ not only briefed against them, but was in cahoots with… Continue reading Snarky, sanctimonious and and always off the record – the British establishment is at work
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A horrible, haunting murder has this week prompted the usual hand-wringing on news programmes and online. Why should women take responsibility for their own safety? Is there something intrinsically wrong with men? Or sentencing? Or the police? Or the press? To me, it is very odd that the one group never brought into the argument… Continue reading Femjep and murder – when will TV begin to see the connection?
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It was in January 1985 when with my son Xan, who was seven at the time, I first entered the Loftus Road Stadium in west London. Neither of us had been to a proper, professional football match before, but Xan had become obsessed by our local team Queens Park Rangers and, since they played 15… Continue reading THANK YOU TO MY TEAM – 35 YEARS OF FANDOM IN A SONG
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