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…
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…
I am at the House of Commons. Karl lives less than three miles down the road. So I leave it late and I’m crossing the river on a bus when I get the message: “A very close friend of mine was stabbed severely in the chest yesterday and passed away an hour ago. I’m…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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.
For Prospect Magazine: The first time I came to London on my own, I came to see Bob Dylan. He was playing at the Hammersmith Apollo. I had tickets for three of the shows. I remember freezing in the queues outside. I remember the stampede to get to the front when the bastards finally…
Witten for Prospect Magazine: The Komedia Kvizo had started. Perhaps this would be instructive. I had hoped to get to the heart of the matter straight away. I had hoped to re-examine the biggest question of our times—the European Union referendum—but to come at it from deep within the pan-European hinterlands of Remainia. But instead, the…
Written for The New Republic Magazine (USA): Despite being just a short hop across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, Vauxhall used to be London’s least fashionable borough, an area known only for its outdoor urinals and irredeemably depressed bus station. But this atmosphere is now changing. Damien Hirst, ex-enfant terrible of…
Written for The Guardian: Myles Jackman is on a mission to change Britain’s obscenity laws. For him, it’s more than a job, it’s a moral calling… 1. Tiger Porn One evening in the late autumn of 2008, Andrew Holland returned from holiday to discover that the front door to his home in…
Written for The Guardian: The first time I thought consciously about Leonard Cohen’s death was in 2002. I was listening to his 2001 album Ten New Songs while crawling my way through the writing of a novel in which each chapter took its title from one of the poems in The Songs and Sonnets of John Donne. I remember hearing…
Written for Prospect Magazine: When President Obama stood behind his familiar podium at the White House following the recent mass shooting at a college in Oregon, he made one of the most telling, angry and moving speeches he has ever given. The speech is worth watching for all kinds of reasons—not least because it is both oddly restorative…
Written for Prospect Magazine: I am on the rail replacement bus service outside East Midlands Parkway train station, which itself lies resplendent beneath the ravishing architectural solicitation that is Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in the rain. I am on the top deck with three other men. One has a gold tooth, another a shaven head…
This is the age of aquariums: young men are paying a fortune to “aqua-scape” their indoor fish tanks—and parting with up to £250,000 for a single fish. Why? Written for Prospect Magazine: We’re waiting for the suicide fish. It is Monday night. We’re in expensive territory—Notting Hill, west London—and we’re staring at a huge…
Written for Prospect Magazine: I have just arrived. I am standing in the square in the small Swiss valley town of Meiringen. On all sides, fir trees and high alpine meadows give way to cragged grey faces of rock that are veined in ice. Here and there louring clouds snag the serrated peaks. “What’s…
Written For Prospect Magazine: I was powering along the French autoroute in my truly awful car wishing I had gone into mining precious metals or something when my travelling companion piped up from the passenger seat: “Why are you driving so fast?” It was a good question. We were heading to a small town…
Written For Prospect Magazine Day four. London Fashion Week. I’m heading backstage half an hour before yet another show. I pass a neo-Ottoman grouse-beater, a man with rabbit ears, a slouch of camp rockabilly-punks, DH Lawrence and a six-foot female Day-Glo clown-witch. I’m a grizzled veteran of the scene by now, but even…
Written for Prospect Magazine I have some good news—kick back, relax, enjoy the rest of the summer, stop worrying about where your life is and isn’t heading. What news? Well, on 24th September, we can officially and definitively declare that postmodernism is dead. Finished. History. A difficult period in human thought over and done…