Listening to the Language of the Birds (Li Bai) The sky creeps along the city walls: clouds and crows alight from branches, telephone poles, narrow lanes. In a canal-side flat a girl is knitting clothes for fog, mist, drizzle. She hears the birds’ black refrain and waits: her hands are …
When director Michel Gondry wrote his latest feature, Be Kind Rewind, it seems likely that he worked out the solution to his plot before coming up with the problem it subsequently resolved…
Reality vs fiction—what do we really mean when we make such a distinction? In this age when almost anything can be replicated and mass-produced, many of us long for something we perceive to be truly authentic. On television there is such a variety of programmes with documentary-like content, it is …
Christmas in New York means doing some really touristy activities. First I took a train up to mid-town to see the ice-skating and the huge tree in Rockefeller Center, then trotted along to Radio City Music Hall to see the legendary Rockettes—which was the most spectacular show I have ever …
Last spring, I began to teach creative writing at Polmont Young Offenders Institution, a prison for young men in Scotland. Society would like to believe prisons are liminal: prisoners go in, spend some time, are rehabilitated, come out reformed. At the end of my first visit, when I walked out, …
These photographs, taken in February 2004, document the Northern Irish city of Derry-Londonderry, which, after decades of sectarian violence (known as “the Troubles”), has achieved peace.
“It’s been a mess and yet it hasn’t been a mess.” Sheila Colvin has had an extraordinary international career in the arts—including playing an vital role in the Edinburgh International Festival. JANE McKIE talks to her about the adventure of a “completely unstructured life” that took her to London, New …
Almost quarter of a century after he made his explosive debut with The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks is still shaking up the literary world. ANDREW J. WILSON discusses space, time and middle initials with one of our greatest contemporary authors.
WORLD OF WORDS ~in memory of Players Edwin Booth & Samuel Clemens~ “Words are nets through which all truth escapes” – Paula Fox
Science-fiction author CHARLES STROSS really has seen the future, but he didn’t need a crystal ball or a time machine to do it. All it took was a long-haul flight to the other side of the world…
As Niels Bohr said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” George Orwell never claimed to be a prophet, but as ANDREW B. SMITH shows, his thoughts about the trends of his time still resonate today.
Orwell’s early attitude to the Scots and Scotland could best be described as frosty. In his excellent biography, Bernard Crick refers to the period during 1934 when Orwell had a girlfriend in Hampstead, a member of the Labour League of Youth, who remembered that he talked little about politics, “except …
She called her pack of pills her very own Advent calendar—her chemical countdown to a good day or to a very good day. The choice was hers…
PLUS ÇA CHANGE PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE: HOWEVER… (The more things change the more they remain the same, however…) “Je t’aime, ô capitale infâme!” —Charles Baudelaire (“Le Spleen de Paris”)
“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game—and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.” —Jacques Barzun
A desire to dim my presence in the eye-watering constellation of celebrity explains my preference for the Balmoral Palm Court Bar. A location where such Appellations de Hollywood Contrôlée as Tom Hanks and Jack Burns sojourn is the ideal spot for Vins de Pays such as myself to pass unobserved. …
Full time student and urban explorer JENNI CHITTICK begins her search for some of Glasgow’s hidden treasures — from shops, to chatty traffic wardens to dead robots — it’s all in a day’s walk. I love my Glasgow, but don’t really know it. I can navigate my way to the …
The Skinny Editor Rupert Thomson surveys the ethos of a night out, bar decor and why we go here instead of there.
It might have escaped your notice, but in the US and the UK attacks on free speech are on the rise. In order to protect us from subversion and terror, our dutiful lawmakers on both sides of the pond are busy dusting off ancient legislation, passing new statutes and making …
Two years on from the Hurricane Katrina disaster, New Orleans is still being battered. The city known for its combination of virtue and vice, is being swept by hostile forces — big corporations want to sanitize and package it as The Big Easy Experience. Readers from Scotland to Darfur can …
I. The Kid
For much of the twentieth century, the Gorbals district of Glasgow was one of the most deprived and dangerous areas in Europe. The last thing it needed was a resident monster, but half a century ago, that’s exactly what it got. PAUL F. COCKBURN investigates the strange case of the …
Why did Northern Rock start to crumble? Is the credit crunch a new kind of breakfast cereal? And who blew the financial bubble?
Entre Guillemets “Euphemistically Speaking” or Are You Kidding Me? “Every jest is an earnest in the womb of time” – George Bernard Shaw
On November 4, 2007, still drowsy from too little sleep, we quietly gathered at Park Avenue and 32nd Street in Manhattan just before dawn. Our buses sat idling as we runners climbed on board for the first leg of what we hoped would be a spectacular 26.2-mile marathon run through …
Is there life after death? Only the dead can tell, and they’ve got a funny way of going about it. Original fiction by GAVIN INGLIS.
Mailer in Edinburgh • Farewell Mr. Cheam • Restless Native Poetry • Mile-high Breakup Stormin’ Norman There’s no way that a column called “Punch Lines” could fail to note the passing of Norman Mailer, the two-fisted tornado of American literature, who flung in the towel on 10 November at the …
Deck the halls, book out my diary… I’d throw in a fa-la-la-la-la, but my corporate Christmas shindig schedule ate into Beaujolais Nouveau week this year. My bank manager loves it, but I question block booking November and December when most revellers seem perfectly happy to introduce themselves to the wine.
“What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times—and you were there.” —Walter Cronkite
Mean City to Big Apple I Is it better to travel hopefully than to arrive? JONATHAN PRYCE tells a tale of two cities—on opposite sides of the Atlantic. August: Glasgow Today the air is clear, but apprehension clouds my gaze into a rare bright blue sky. In just three weeks, …
ANDREW B. SMITH tunes in, turns on and drops a bombshell. {xtypo_quote}Will the UK’s Last.fm spell the end of music radio as we know it? Some commentators think so, but the record industry aren’t happy.{/xtypo_quote}
REFLECTIONS from Ground Zero Monday, 30 July 2007: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the sixth anniversary of 9/11 would not be held in the pit at Ground Zero, but instead at the nearby concrete Zuccotti Park. The reason: “safety concerns”, now that construction is underway. After a …
Hot and cold running sonar Not everything in the media is altered these days. Take a look at the photograph running above. Trust me, no pixels were harmed, or otherwise digitally manipulated, in the making of this picture.
Regular readers of this column will recognize that its scribe places a premium on modesty, and so will be surprised to discover that I found myself marketed as an Edinburgh Fringe show throughout this last August. I can assure all such readers that they would have to multiply their own …
Up for It 3 people. 2 sexes. 1 thing on their minds… Fly Boy said: Ony fliers? For roach. Cheers. D’ye no ken the lassie? Ye must, man—she’s no exactly hard tae miss! She wis there the Saturday before last, at Luvely, wi that shower that come through fae Bathgate.
When the Reverse is also True: a Conversation on Culture, Art and Literature On 21 August 2006 in Edinburgh, Martin Belk interviewed two esteemed men of letters and culture, Jim Haynes and John Calder. On 21 August 2007, excerpts from that spry conversation opened an international web event entitled When …