He was smart, bisexual, funny, cynical, daring, vivid, his poems sold tens of thousands on day of publication and went on to grip a generation all across Revolutionary Europe: so why does the BBC insist Byron be read in vague RADA mumbles by a wan qu[…]

Newscasters should be your friends: well, actually, I’m not at all sure if this is true. They pop up in your life night after night, but it’s a bit mad to smile back at them or wave goodnight when they say “see you tomorrow”. […]

“it was great to meet you, i’m sorry it was in a place where one could not really conduct a conversation @ normal talking volume” says duane of the Windmill in Brixton

Which it wasn’t, it’s true: the odd thing is that […]

The entire pub experience remains a bit of a mystery to me so I’m allowed to ask #1: re The Lamb in Lamb’s Conduit Street (and any other pubs this applies to).
1. Snob screens: why?
2: Little two-inch-high nautical-style brass rails round[…]

Driving in Unfamiliar London Considered as a Chart-Topping Computer Game: I haven’t done it in an age, I realised, but the housewarming (excellent party for a nice flat: thanks for inviting me guys!!) was far far across town (in the wild south,[…]

Watching TV while you’re on the phone: my friend AB lives in Toronto, and when she calls three or four times a year, we tend to talk for hours. So she’s describing Matthew Barney’s new Cremaster movie, and whether the film Seabiscui[…]

This wacky urban myth that CSI took it on itself to face last night (UK Channel 5): the oh-so-cool black guy who secretly gambles was sceptical, the dark-hair woman who caught a bullet for President Bartlett’s daughter was cheerfully up for we[…]

Something Rainy just messaged to me made me look something up, and I realised that this was prefigured on this thread: in other words, yet again an idea I fondly thought I had had all by myself was had earlier (as usual by Alan T). Still: “no-t[…]

Tracer Hand, newly arrived in London, eats pizza with me in Chinatown, and tells of the Mexican restaurants in New York City which are run and staffed by the Chinese. I approve, obv – at least if vice versa is established also, soon (and all ot[…]

It was the major cultural fashion immediately before Romanticism: big mistake. Two-and-a-half centuries later, the look of the 18th century pretty remains the default setting for “datedness”. The Classical Revival buildings, the flouncy c[…]