Alan Sillitoe is 80 on 4 March 2008: author of 81 books so far in every known category — and counting: radio ham, traveller, map collector, holder of numerous literary awards and academic honours and the least pretentious of famous men, his birthday’s worth celebrating [More >>>]
A new selection of howlers, solecisms and other follies from the print media in the early weeks of 2008 [More >>>]
Literature is alright, still — Heading of Guardian column by Maya Jaggi, one of the judges of the 2007 Orange prize for Fiction, Guardian, 13 Dec 07. But the booby prize no doubt goes...
A “Queen’s body-guard yeoman bed goer” is just one of those in the new year honours list whose occupation prompts feverish speculation [More >>>]
Through the mysteries of Facebook I have been introduced to a hilarious American humorist, Bill Maher [More >>>]
New US film ‘Rendition’, about the illegal CIA practice of kidnapping a terrorist suspect for interrogation in a country practising torture, deserves to be seen both for its political message and as excellent cinema, notwithstanding some misconceived criticism in some of the UK media [More >>>>]
See a marvellous musical at the Landor theatre in south London before it closes on 20 October 07 [More >>>]
The words of the French national anthem, to sing along at the Rugby World Cup semi-finals [More >>>]
Taking up some more peccadillos with the Guardian, to encourage continued maintenance of its high standards [More >>>]
The FCO website publishes astonishing and shaming statistics about the huge number of demands by Brits abroad for consular assistance following e.g. deaths, arrests, hospitalisations and lost passports, with intriguing discrepancies between figures for different countries [More >>>]