McBain, writing under that name and Evan Hunter (which he changed his name to in 1952, from Salvatore Lombino), is the only writer by whom I have read over a hundred books, and that is likely to remain true for a long time, maybe permanently. And I&#[…]

FM (Wednesdays, ITV2, yes ITV2) is a very odd little concept, but kind of works, I think?

So you get 20 minutes of him off the IT crowd and her off of teachers doing pretty standard “embarrassment and swearing” comedy set in a thinly-vei[…]

Here’s a post from Hitsville raising an interesting point about Metacritic scores. The case looks pretty clear-cut: movie critics are harsher and more discerning than music ones.
Harsher, yes. More discerning? Well. Allow me to get all research[…]

An extraordinary passage in Huizinga’s The Waning Of The Middle Ages comes to our attention:
The taste for unbridled luxury culminated in the court fetes….Nothing could be more insipid or ugly than the ‘entremets’, consisting[…]

Not only is Freaky Trigger BACKBackback but so is it peripatetic radio offshoot FREAKY TRIGGER AND THE LOLLARDS OF POP on Resonance FM. Broadcasting to ALL OF LONDON on crystal clear FM* on 104.4, webstreaming from the Resonance website and then popp[…]

We’re back, and we’ve taken advantage of the unscheduled interruption to improve the site a bit.
Here’s what you might notice:
– a streamlined new design: still pink, but a bit less garish and using the space we’ve got r[…]

Late last week, as the servers holding this very site bowed under the sheer volume of user interest, a hardy band of correspondents ventured forth to a pub for some drinks, not an unusual occurrence of a Friday evening it must be said, but perhaps be[…]

Last night saw the first episode of Law & Order:UK, a British version of a US television programme! I couldn’t remember this sort of cross-ocean event ever having happened before in the history of entertainment so your intrepid telly report[…]

Hi readers – we’re aware that the FT server has been erratic at best today if you’re accessing it via the site. We’re looking into this. Apologies, especially to any new readers who came looking for us after the MacCauley And […]

To read the story, click here; to read about our ‘hauntography’ project, click here.
An elderly man takes in his orphaned young cousin. It is surprising, given that the man is known as something of a recluse, a retiring academic type &#8[…]