A small and curious exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery
This is an eclectic show. How could it not be? A wide remit of three hundred years and the only filter is sex.
The photos and paintings of the women fall into distinct groups. The first […]

I read Personal Injuries by Scott Turow on holiday. It seemed the right thing to do. Turow is the legal thriller writer who got gazumped by John Grisham. There he was, eeking out nice little pot-boilers like Presumed Innocent (Harrison Ford’s w[…]

OOOH WEEE OOOOOOH…
In 1991, Virgin Publishing launched a line of original Doctor Who fiction. Continuing where “Survival” left off, the book range followed the further adventures of the seventh Doctor and Ace, building onto the Doct[…]

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Dear everyone I know
We are going to see this at one or several of these dates, and we are going to have the most fun ever. For those of you in London, the chance to see several of Forced Entertainment’s sho[…]

The Burglar In The Library by Lawrence Block
I’ve talked about Block here before, in glowing terms. So why do I need to go on about him again, and about a Bernie Rhodenbarr novel, probably his most lightweight series (he has several, in case yo[…]

I went to an auction! An art auction! At a proper auction house! On Bond Street!
I’ve been getting very into several 20th Century British Printmakers for a while. This Print Sale was not the first I’ve attended, but it was the first time[…]

Coma – Alex Garland
Has Alex Garland got over his rumoured writer’s block? Well, Coma doesn’t really suggest so. Released without media fanfare, it’s a short story trying to disguise itself as a novella.
There are no page num[…]

Dracula (Part Two – Transylvania)
The fictional Dracula is a composite character drawn from diverse sources. One part Jack the Ripper, two parts Romanian folklore, but the name Bram Stoker borrowed for his creation belongs to a barbaric and ver[…]

I am currently reading Gould’s Book Of Fish, by Richard Flanagan, which won the Commonwealth Prize for literature in 2002 (though Amazon suggest there was a version of it knocking about since 1998). A beguiling work, it puports to be a reweitte[…]

Underworld by Don DeLillo
You can’t help but be impressed by the scope and ambition of this book: it sets itself up as a (the?) Great American Novel of the second half of the 20th Century, starting with a famous 1951 baseball game* and trying t[…]