Sexy History
I’m reading Rubicon by Tom Holland, a pacy account of the corruption and collapse of the Roman republic in the first century BC. It’s a period I’m interested in because my own Roman studies started with Augustus, with t[…]

Practical Criticism
I wonder sometimes if music criticism shouldn’t be more practical. I suppose I’m thinking of the music criticism you pay for in magazines. The ‘music press’, with a handful of sterling exceptions (you know […]

Misery, complaints, self-pity, injustice — the utter joy of Soft Cell’s Non-Stop Exotic Video Show, just rereleased for the first time on DVD, lies in its naivete. Which is a trite thing to say on the one hand and something perfectly apt […]

Oh Acton!
A sprawling town on the edge of the centre, you could say it’s where the westerly suburbs begin, a mix of the urban and the very suburban. To me it has a really special charm, probably like your home town does to you. I don’t th[…]

At the weekend a group of us celebrated a friend’s birthday by taking two boats down the Thames, from Greenwich to Westminster, and then on from Westminster to Kew. Unless you extend the trip in both directions to the Thames Barrier and and Ric[…]

Buy American — one of the more amusing things about my London visits is that I seem to inevitably pick up something there that is in fact from here. And theoretically I’m paying more for it. It makes sense that there would in fact be pl[…]

A Walk in the Wilderness
I went for a Sunday stroll across Walthamstow marshes.
On previous walks, I’ve often thought I had the fields to myself (apart from the cows, back down from Waltham Abbey to preserve the rare marshwort). Yesterday, ther[…]

Indie Chicken
An occasional series that I hope all and sundry will contribute to. The varied quality of independent chickenmongerers has been of interest to me for some time and so I would like to solicit reviews of your local fried goods vendors, i[…]

One thing I like about Soca is that it often prefers a bit of good honest entendre-laden smut over slacker chat. So here over a typically sweet sunny day tune we have “Come water my garden… I need a gardener who can work this soil…&[…]

Kittens At Science Forefront: “It’s like a real life version of Photoshop!” says delighted public.[…]