Top five things in galleries to go and see for free in London right now (in reverse order)
5. Henrik Plenge Jacobsen: “J’accuse” at the South London Gallery
HPJ is really saying something in this exhibition, something about justice[…]

1968 – Mark Kurlansky
Mass-market history reaches the recent past, and faces a stylistic problem. The genre tends to a gentle narrative style, rich with curios and always willing to take the occasional detour. But widen the focus and the narrat[…]

I expected M*A*S*H (the book) to be like a poor man’s Catch-22, and indeed it is. However that poor man will finish it a lot quicker, be able to read good, hearty, storyful chunks of it on the crapper AND be acquainted with the madness of war. […]

—there might be evil in the world, and human beings are destructive motherfuckers and there is not much we can do about that…But sometimes the dust settles, and even if it affects everything, even if it is in the dust and the air we breat[…]

“that now I do not like to think of maggots in his eyes”
hopkin greenfrog and i argued abt betjeman in the comments to this post, and tim asked “Did he ever liked anything modernist (art lit music architecture whatever)”? So […]

retrospective turner prize for the british empire at its implausible victorian height :
i. for lord cardigan for modellin the cardigan, after ii. leadin the charge of the light brigade right into the russian guns, then iii. decidin that hand-to-hand[…]

Batman in Love
So, I’m reading Pop Out: Queer Warhol, edited by Jennifer Doyle e al, –is a mostly useless academic wank job about Andy loving other men–there was a line here or a line there that might be useful, but I was disappoint[…]

My assault on the pop music of literature continues, albeit akin to buying The Strokes album now. Franzen’s The Corrections then; a doorstep sized beach novel made for slightly shingly, uncomfortable beaches. We are in “great American no[…]

King Rat by China Mieville
I’ve enthused wildly over his second and third novels (Perdido Street Station and The Scar) here, and finally got around to his first. The others are set in SF-fantasy worlds, while this one is in London, but hardly t[…]

What I Did In The Holidays
Well, I’ve now held a copy in my hand so I’m finally prepared to believe it really exists. Not sure when the official publication date is (tomorrow according to the publisher, “not yet” according to[…]