Keats: A Brief Life

Wearing school uniforms, eating semolina, and being force-fed romantic poets are all familiar to anyone who attended a high school in England any time in the last fifty years.The sight of pimply adolescents stupefied with boredom as someone read out sections of Christabel by Coleridge or ‘Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ by …

American Utopia

If you never got chance to see the Talking Heads live, this is about as close as you’re going to get. David Byrne’s musical uses his back catalogue to great effect as it turns his life’s musical journey into a song and dance abstract extravaganza. He’s joined on stage by 11 immigrant musicians from around …

Don McCullin: Hero for All Time

For a long time Don McCullin has been a hero of mine. Not just because of his powerful images, many of which have the power to bring tears to my eyes (a rare occurrence for me) but because of the example he gives us in how to live a moral life. We often bandy about …

Owning Kerouac

All through the later part of this year I have had an inexplicable Jack Kerouac obsession. I’ve read virtually every book he’s written as well as listened to a number of audio books like Deever Brown’s memoir of taking a road trip with Kerouac in the sixties and Allen Ginsberg’s reading of The Dharma Bums …