Maurizio Gasparri, former communications minister and currently senate leader for the Pdl party, didn’t mince his words – for once. Referring to the high-profile decision by German Athlete, Imke Duplitzer, to boycott the opening ceremony – though not the games themselves – Gasparri said today: “The gesturee of the German athlete Imke Duplitzer, who has […]
I’m a fence-sitter (as painful as that may be, literally and metaphorically) when it comes to the dread argument about Politics in music. Like most things in life, it all depends on how it’s done. When you forget the primacy of the song, whilst evangelising, you’d be better off – and equally effective, which is […]
Having just finished Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, it was a pleasure to stumble upon an interview with the author (on his site, via Powells.com) where he discussed the process that led him to choose the narrative voice of the novel. I had tried variations of minimalism in the third person, with voices ranging fable […]
I have only myself to blame. After I read the e-mail rant heard around the world, my curiosity got the better of me when I spotted a copy of Giles Coren’s first novel, Winkler, on the shelves of my local library. When I say “novel”, I should point out that Coren’s book is not really […]
With a sparkling lack of imagination, perhaps, I find the best way to approach this intriguing novel by the late Benjamin Tammuz – former literary editor of Israeli newspaper Haaretz – is through his co-national Amos Oz. But, read the following passage about opening gambits between author and reader, from Oz’s collection of essays on […]
Luka Bloom is Irish and while his name looks Irish it always feels like it couldn’t belong to an Irish man, it sounds too cool almost. Maybe that’s why Barry Moore chose it? He is of course a brother of Christy Moore, perhaps the definitive Irish artist of the last 20 years in the sense […]
There’s nothing I like more than getting hooked on a melody, then stepping back an instant and realising that there’s an intelligent lyric shouldering the song up. Sure, there are plenty of good songwriters where the poetry is the element first and foremost that you notice – an arresting line, an alliterative glance that catches […]
Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher bemoaned the state of the music scene lately because modern bands just didn’t have that genuine feel to them anymore.“If they weren’t in bands they’d all have great careers anyway,” he reckoned and when you watch Coldplay front ads for Greenpeace and Fair Trade you get the impression that early 90s […]
One of the most infamous attacks against civilians, during the brief and bloody end-phase of the second world war in Italy, took place on March 24th 1944. The victims of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre were three-hundred-and-thirty-five Italian men, a fact recognised by all. Less clear, at least in popular memory, have been those ultimately responsible […]