I was surprised that Star Of The Sea was so little about the actual voyage of a ship from Ireland to New York during the potato famine, and rather an attempt at a literary pastiche to try and fill in a lack of nineteenth century Irish literature. For[…]

It is good to see that despite a blip with Tigerland, Joel Schumacher has returned to stake his claim as the worst director in Hollywood. Whilst I did not expect The Phantom Of The Opera to be any good, I did not in my wildest dreams expect it to be […]

The Big U by Neal Stephenson
This was Stephenson’s first novel, before the PoMo blockbusters. Unsurprisingly therefore, it’s a campus novel, but it’s not like any other campus novel I’ve read. There are comically useless profe[…]

by way of farewell to a complicated (and intermittently awful) (but with good bits) year
i guess i think of contrarianism more as a tool than a principle – i like it for its effects not its “morality” – except i also know say[…]

In December 2004 Blog Seven was a weblog about Christmas.[…]

The London Pub
I have made no secret of the fact that I’ve wanted to go to the London Pub (on Southampton Row I think, though I’m not totally sure) for AGES. Anything that brazenly named has to be worth a look.
It’s as strange and a[…]

What WERE We Thinking?
What’s coming up next year, then?
i) The Freaky Trigger Top 100 Songs of all Time. Determined on Wednesday night using our impeccable scientific method, this should surprise, delight* and prove a handy source of low-imagi[…]

“In my box are such delights…” (Part 3 of 3)
It may be a conservative programme that’s responding to a vanished world, but that doesn’t mean The Box Of Delights is bad television. In my view it sidesteps its potential pi[…]

The White Hart, Drury Lane
The initial stop on yesterday’s pub crawl claims to be the oldest licenced premises in London. But evidence for its antiquity is in short supply – it’s been refitted three times in the last decade and whil[…]

Jesus Shit, yet again.
Raymond and I were walking from Nathan Phillips Sqaure towards Dundas in downtown Toronto last night, talking about things we usually talk about, rambling about a newish city—when we walked past the Marriot (owned by the […]