Best holiday drink
Pete’s piece below about best meals didn’t evoke any holiday meals with me, but it did bring back the greatest drink I have ever had. We (my wife and I) had arrived in Calcutta early in the morning, and our train down t[…]

FT Top 100 Films
36: DUEL
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the central reservation…
There is something wonderful about early Spielberg films, and that something is simplicity. Up until 1941 (the film, not the year unless it was t[…]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
It took bloody ages to read this. I’ve not finished any other books this long (it’s about a thousand pages plus a hundred of small print notes) that I haven’t absolutely loved – 1001 Night[…]

POP FACTOR: 624 CONTROVERSY RATING: 263
Sometime in the endless pre-release life of “These Words” I decided I loved the disarming ending. A little while later I decided I loved the beginning too – so confident, so cute. And the mi[…]

Budget Boozing – The Lord Nelson, Urmston
Like many of the London-based Publog correspondents, I’m a fan of the Sam Smith’s pub. Leaving aside the tastiness of their beers and the pleasing trad interiors, the winning factor for a sk[…]

Olympic Quiz
This was a quiz I put together for a work charity night, with a roughly Olympic theme. Because it was a charity/fun quiz there are a higher than normal proportion of questions which require (unless you’re a complete obsessive or sh[…]

Sounds Of Sweden: unsurprisingly, I approve.[…]

I never realised until last night how totally physically exhausting doing a pub quiz is. Standing up shouting at a room of pissed people for two hours: nein danke. It seemed to go pretty well, though by the end I was so knackered that my response to […]

Wish fulfillment ain’t what it used to be — maybe I should have read a little more closely through the contributors’ list before I checked out What Might Have Been: Imaginary History From Twelve Leading Historians. I’m a suck[…]

Dduk bo rak, my new friend — it’s a variant of Korean BBQ, and according to the review of Shik Do Rak in this typically brilliant Jonathan Gold column, it’s the hot new thing. And Korean BBQ itself, speaking from my ill-informed per[…]