NB. The photos: I was on the South Bank last night after seeing Ralph Fiennes in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ and took these shots, sitting by the Thames with friends and beers. Despite the fact that London now looks like Singapore, you can still find a pub with an upturned flowerpot for an ashtray. […]

  You might fill a church hall but you’re not Beyoncé I was once in a European bookshop when the bookseller asked; ‘Are you famous?’ I turned to my friend. ‘Am I famous?’ She considered the question for a moment. ‘Well,’ she told the bookseller, ‘he’s known.’ There was a time when I became known […]

Today, as heavy grey veils of rain drape London, sinking us into a semi-darkness that acts as a reminder that we are a Northern and virtually Nordic capital, here are some views of the metropolis from residents in their own words…   I am the city whose fog will fall like a finger gently Erasing […]

I did a bad thing. I upset a Milennial. He’s some guy with a narrow jacket and a children’s TV show haircut who was swanking off online about his latest article in a pointless freesheet known mainly for publishing recycled press releases about trainers and beard gel. After I made a joke about the rag […]

  Christmas is approaching – it’s the time from which writers theoretically derive most of their earnings. This isn’t usually the case for me because my books tend to be published in spring and autumn. I don’t have the weight to punch through the scrum of summer holiday/ Christmas publications. This year and next year, […]

It’s a beverage whose trade was used to build a workforce of drug addicts Last night at the Crime Writers Association Christmas Party someone reminded me that I wrote a couple of pieces about the ritual of tea, and asked if I could find them, so I’ve combined the main points into a single article. […]

The book is the book is the book. As used by Michelle Obama, the term ‘Imposter Syndrome’ is, I suppose, what used to be called ‘low self-esteem’, in that it refers to the feeling that you don’t have the right to be here. ‘It doesn’t go away, the feeling that you shouldn’t take me that […]

Not having a  phone didn’t make life better ‘Hall of Mirrors’ just came out in the US and I’ve had some nice pieces written about it, along with a slew of questions about growing up in the sixties (although admittedly I entered that era in single digits). But after yet another patronising ‘people of your […]

Here’s a fun game; instead of trying to list your top ten films, try to make a list of half a dozen short films that were game-changers. I played this for an hour last night but only managed four until I had to look up more. Thousands of short films are written and produced every […]

When the ‘Hamilton’ audience caused a furore in the White House for booing theatre attendee Mike Pence, it made Lin-Manuel Miranda a spokesperson for the migrant diaspora, so it feels right that the latest in Miranda’s series of Hamildrops should be written by the legendary John Kander, and should be pointedly aimed at the migrant […]