On the rare occasions that anyone asks me anything about my writing, it’s usually about music reviews. The consensus seems to be that a good review (I don’t mean a positive one) should either be ‘listen to the music and say if it’s good or…
There are relatively few times in life when it’s possible to switch off your mind and enter a trance-like state without going out of your way to do so; but sitting in a classroom for a period (or better yet, a double period) of…
Was it a cold morning in Edinburgh in 1586 when James VI, only twenty years old, very aware of his status as a divinely-appointed monarch, but with already a lifetime’s experience of human nature and earthly politics, sat in front of Adrian Vanson to be…
I suppose I should warn people: this is pretty much all spoilers. Television has always had one big advantage over cinema – time – which should really make it the better medium for drama. After all, the novel is almost always superior to the short…
Between the ages of 14 and 16 or thereabouts, the things I probably loved the most – or at least the most consistently – were horror (books and movies) and heavy metal. These loves changed (and ended, for a long time) at around the…
Gustave Courbet was born 101 years ago today, but although he remains one of the key figures in nineteenth century art and the roots of modernism, this isn’t about his painting. During the Franco-Prussian war, Courbet, by then in his 50s and an elder…
To start with, this was mostly about books, and I think it will end that way too. But it begins with a not terribly controversial statement; hero worship is not good. And the greatest figures in the fight for human rights or human…
This is another roundup of new music that seemed interesting enough to me to check out. Not, you might think, an ideal time to be releasing a new album; and yet, with the majority of music sales, despite the resurgence of vinyl, still being digital…
Faith A. Pennick D’Angelo’s Voodoo 33⅓ books This review may not be fair to writer/filmmaker Faith A. Pennick and her excellent book, not because I didn’t like it – it’s great – but because since I was sent the book (by now onsale), events…
At some point in the late fifteenth century, the poet Robert Henryson (who lived in Dunfermline, not too far from where I’m writing now), began his Testament of Cresseid with one of my favourite openings of any poem: Ane doolie sessoun to ane cairfull…