‘A Bible with a bit cut out! […] It don’t bind no more’n a ballad book.’
I flew back to Edinburgh from Brussels via Heathrow yesterday, and on the bus into town I realised that on the second flight I’d left the boo[…]

Prog Rocking!
Tom Allen’s 2000AD stuff. So much here if you root around in this sticky (fwd/back navigation acts oddly for me) fortunecity site. There’s even a Crisis timeline, details of the Prog 2000 extravaganza (which I never saw), li[…]

Gerhard Richter at the Whitechapel Art Gallery
I’ve never seen so many images in one show – there are several thousand – so on that basis maybe this justifies the high ‘8.50 admission. It’s dominated by his long-term, co[…]

Books you’re too old to read at 34
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas ‘ Hunter S Thompson
Despite four years as a student, an insatiable appetite for reading and an impressionable and gullible mind, I’ve never read Fear & Loathi[…]

Donald Judd at Tate Modern
I think one of the more interesting artistic phenomena of the Twentieth Century was the move by many artists away from the valorising of the artist’s touch and of craft. This was started by Duchamp with his readymades[…]

Paul Butler
Paul Butler so simple, using tape to cover words in found ads, block out certain aspects of perfect landscapes, and make slick general collages. Even the title of his show is ironic, My Mad Skillz, how much skill does it take to clip an […]

As you arrive at Dalston Junction from the West, there’s a graffito to cheer you, high on a whitewashed wall overlooking a little car-park. Its inspiration is a far-too-famous poster of a 60s political icon: it’s a stencil – so it m[…]

Alexander McCall Smith ‘ The Precious Ramotswe books
It was the colourful book covers that first drew me in. I’m not sure if they come free with the purchase of a travelcard, but everyone on the tube seemed to be reading Alexander McCall […]

Worst book I’ve read in some time? ‘The Man Who Risked His Partner’ – by Reed Stephens. Or should I say, Stephen Donaldson. Bizarrely reissued under his real name, this is a mid-eighties crime genre outing for the bloke who wr[…]

Coming Soon!!! by John Barth: What’s it about?
I’m not sure how useful the above question is in general, but it’s something we all ask and I guess almost all reviews try to address it too. I was thinking of this while reading John B[…]