Large, gruesome, brutal and gluttonous: Donald Trump is the archetypal ogre. So how did he manage to stomp back for a second term? The animated film Shrek opens with the eponymous hero wiping his bottom on a book. Shrek then emerges from the toilet and we follow his swamp-savvy morning routine. He bathes…
The main feeling is still a deep sense of relief. A long and hollowing sickness lifted at last. After that, though, comes hope and anticipation and curiosity. Like everybody else, I’ve been trying to understand him. How does the manner proclaim the man? The vibe from veteran journalist friends is that they can’t quite render…
Written for The Guardian: Astonishingly, Bob Dylan turns 80 on Monday. For millions of people like me, this is a moment to celebrate. We’re insane, of course. We listen to him every day like other people pray. We’ve been to hundreds of the live shows – witnessed the transcendent moments and stood there loyally through…
For The Guardian: The long-running German satirical show Extra 3 recently featured a sketch with the following voiceover: “From the people who brought you The Crown – the epic saga of the Queen – now comes the ridiculous story of this guy, a notorious buffoon at the head of a country … The Clown.” The…
Written For The New Statesman May 2020 I The Man For a moment, the world is as it used to be – unconfined, uncurtailed, alive with human teeming: coronavirus-free. The early light of a mid-April morning is already at the window. Sun-shot images flit through his mind: he’s playing somewhere in a rock pool…
Written for The Guardian: In the weeks before our lives changed for ever, my grandfather disappeared and my grandmother became seriously ill. We drove the length of the country through snow and ice to fetch her. Already much reduced by arthritis, she could walk only with great difficulty. She would be staying in…
Interview with the Ukrainian Conductor, Natalia Ponomarchuk. Natalia Ponomarchuk was in Odesa when the war began. She was with the National Odesa Philharmonic Orchestra rehearsing the Dvořák Violin Concerto, Vaughan Williams’s “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”, and Stravinsky’s “Song of the Nightingale”. The concert was scheduled for the evening of 25 February…
For The Sunday Times: All childhoods are normal to the children who live them. Back in the 1980s, my siblings and I would arrive at places en masse and not understand the bemused expressions of onlookers as we continued to get out of a trusty old wagon for several minutes longer than seemed reasonable. Of…
Sasha Grynyuk and Yuri Zhislin are two of the best musicians I’ve ever seen perform live. I’ve been getting to know them – partly because they play piano trios, with which I’m obsessed; and partly because Grynyuk is originally from Ukraine and Zhislin is originally from Russia and, just before the war began, they happened…
For the Guardian: Countless books have the Bard’s dramas at their core. From Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk to Withnail and I, here are some of the best: Some years ago, I went to see a production of King Lear and read a theory in the programme that he married twice. Regan and Goneril were the…
This piece was written for The New Statesman and later included in the booklet for the memorial service at St Martin in the Field’s in London. The church was full and the speakers were Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, Tina Brown, Bill Nighy, Martin’s wife, Isabel, and his children … The second time…
When did the booing start? He was never exactly sure. He had put on some of the most spectacular shows of the era. He had filled the big top over and over and over again. He had at least four masterworks to his name. And so, when his career ended so abruptly, he was as…
A performance by the Gesualdo Six usually begins with Joseph Wicks, one of the tenors, taking a tuning fork from his pocket and banging his head with it. Wicks has perfect pitch (although how his pitch is any more perfect than the other five is surely lost on the audience as soon as they start to…
Everything that makes the novel worthwhile and engaging is here: warmth, wit, intelligence, love, death, high seriousness, low comedy, philosophy, subtle personal relationships and the complex interior life of human beings. For those of you unacquainted with the name, Sandro Veronesi is a senior Italian writer who – uniquely – has twice won the Premio…
Unconventional characters, uncertain paternity issues: Irving’s 15th novel retreads familiar ground, but is overlong and poorly edited This novel is not for those without readerly stamina. At 912 pages, you are going to have to love John Irving dearly, or have a passion for reading novels come hell or high water. If the former, then…
David Butt Philip is genuinely world beating. He is a superb tenor and well on course to establishing himself as one of the best opera singers on the circuit. His voice is resonant but supple, straightforwardly beautiful, sophisticated, textured and yet secure. His acting is tasteful and well-judged. His phrasing is impeccable. And he has…
This is the kind of novel that mocks the give-it-10-pages, I-need-to-be-grabbed-because-life-is-too-short school of reading. Even those of the trust-the-artist, persevere-and-stand-fast persuasion should prepare to be tested. I confess: I was confused, bewildered, lost. I wrote down the names of the characters. I backtracked. I cross-tracked. I re-tracked. The shape of the narrative only really began…
Amit Chaudhuri’s eighth novel reminded me of 1993’s Afternoon Raag, featuring an alienated English literature student at Oxford, or 2014’s Odysseus Abroad, about Ananda, a poet adrift in London. Sojourn has the same impressionistic tone – everything feels dreamlike, illusory and yet attentively described. There’s a similar meandering and languid style that likes to survey…
Every summer (if that is what we are calling this), I programme a small chamber music concert. A few days ago, I was asked by a friend if I might be able to put on a favourite non-vocal piece for two instruments. Music-lovers among you will instantly attest that this a completely impossible decision. I…
This list is for people who are like my friend Jo, who knows a little of Bob Dylan and asked, what songs I would recommend? He’s heard the uber-uber-famous works – such as Mr Tambourine Man, Knocking on Heaven’s Door and Blowing in the Wind – so I’ve left these off here. But beyond that,…
Written for The Independent: I remember that we had left our backpacks at Zoo Station and that we were going to save our Deutschmarks by staying out all night. I remember, too, when at last we came into the crumbling old courtyard, that the music was extraordinarily loud – a wall of sound made…
Written for The Guardian Helon Habila’s fourth novel has it all – intelligence, tragedy, poetry, love, intimacy, compassion and a serious, soulful, arms-wide engagement with one of the most acute human concerns of our age: the refugee crisis. This is the answer to the question of what contemporary fiction can do, and the…
Written for The Guardian Trio is William Boyd’s 16th novel – and that’s before we get on to the dozen or so screenplays for film and television. How does someone produce so much work? I don’t know the man’s personal circumstances, but he must have angel armies who ring his desk and fend off…
Kunzru’s smart and thought-provoking sixth novel draws a line from German Romanticism to Trump and the alt-right Written for The Guardian The title of Hari Kunzru’s sixth novel is taken from the famous scene in The Matrix where protagonist Neo is offered a choice: the red pill will allow him to see reality,…
Written for The Guardian Adam Foulds is the real deal. He has previously won the Costa poetry award for his reimagining of the Kenyan Mau Mau uprising, The Broken Word, and been Man Booker-shortlisted for his 2009 novel about John Clare, The Quickening Maze. This is his fourth novel and it follows two protagonists: Henry…
The World’s Greatest Living Artist written for Prospect Magazine: As ever, the big question is: what are we all doing here? But I’m distracted from this because the room has started thrumming with that most peculiar of energies—tangible but invisible, personal but shared: human expectation. I’m with my excellent friend Will Smith, the…
Visiting Tolstoy’s estate, Edward Docx met writers who live gloriously and furiously—and took a beating on behalf of the former head of MI5 Written for Prospect Magazine: We are walking through birch trees that quaver and drip with a steady but refreshing rain. We are on our way to Yasnaya Polyana, the…
OBITUARY WRITTEN FOR THE ECONOMIST: IF THERE is one detail of Philip Roth’s biography that is worth knowing, it is not that he was Jewish or that he had no children or that he was born in New Jersey—it is that he preferred to write standing up at a lectern. There are pages of…
Written for the Guardian English Monsters is exactly the right title for this dark, tender, troubling novel. The phrase comes from Shakespeare – “See you, my princes and my noble peers / These English monsters.” And it is spoken in the book by Mr Crighton, a teacher known as “Crimble”, halfway through the section…
The infamous “Is It Rolling Bob?” podcast on Dylan is here. An hour of pure nectar if you love Dylan. Less so if you don’t.