A Book about Jazz and Jazz Musicians Back in 1962, when Whitney Balliett’s book, Dinosaurs in the Morning, was first published in the US, Jazz was serious stuff: an important part of life, and not just the musical side of life, but life, in fact it had become — with…

Seen through the pages of John Buchan’s biography of The Lord Protector And in the House of Commons, on the 25th November, 1644, the day after Milton’s polemic, Oliver Cromwell “…set forth mercilessly…” all of Manchester’s short comings: his delays and hesitations, with “…these mistakes…due not to accident or to…

Plus: Another Great Day at Sea, and White Sands But Beautiful was my introduction to Geoff Dyer, a writer I felt at home with immediately, as I did when I first came across Hemingway and Steinbeck, D. H. Lawrence, and a certain Jan Myrdal, whose Confessions of a Disloyal European…

“There are no human rights under the Russians…” Amir Mohamedi (1986) Doris Lessing was, in 1986, one of the most celebrated and thought-provoking writers of the 20th century, and although she had, by that year, lived in London since 1949, her birth in a famine ridden Iran in 1919, and…

A Profile “ Dylan Thomas liked small towns by the sea, especially small Welsh towns by the sea…” Dylan Thomas was a writer of genius whose work never dates, work that is full of summer afternoons and grey wet nights in small Welsh towns, and front parlours, and pubs, and…

I sometimes wonder if Lawrence styled himself on the Warrior Poet? With the death of the poet, Lord Byron, in Greece, on April 19, 1824, as he fought alongside those seeking independence from the Ottoman Empire, elements of the British public became aware (maybe for the first time) of a…

A Short Story from 1938 “Did you leave the cage door open?” Over the last years I have written a good many pieces about Ernest Hemingway, including a play, and will never grow tired of doing so, for I believe him to be at the very heart of American culture…

Seen through the pages of John Buchan’s biography of the Lord Protector First the army, Cromwell’s army, had to be placated: the wounds of disagreement healed, and preparations for a new conflict brought to the fore to destroy the treachery of Charles Stuart, King of England. On the night of…

Seen through the pages of John Buchan’s biography of The Lord Protector “But for him, as to most Englishmen, a king seemed an indispensable part of the mechanism of government…” But with the effective end of hostilities after Naseby confusion may certainly have ruled in Parliament, but when Fairfax was…