“Down to Earth”: a fable and a fib

So, I’ve written a novel. It’s called Down to Earth and it’s a fable of the future. I don’t want to say too much about it in case you haven’t read it yet, but I can tell you that it’s set in an English town plagued by shortages, draconian clampdowns, institutional resistance to change, and …

The Screw May Twist: English National Opera and Gilbert and Sullivan

I have long felt that if the phrase “English National Opera” means anything, it means Gilbert and Sullivan. Their comic operas are as thoroughly English as anything ever written, and have even arguably had a hand in creating what we now think “Englishness” is – including an attitude of irony and mockery towards the idea …

Jasper: A Short Story

(I wrote this story in 2017, when Boris Johnson was Foreign Secretary. It was meant as a fierce and rather unsubtle satire on his actions while in that post. However, as none of the editors to whom I sent the story gave any sign of having noticed this, or indeed any sign at all, I …

Wodehouse and the Statues

At the time of writing, the Guardian is reporting that Prime Ministerial hopeful Rishi Sunak “will say” today: “What’s the point in stopping the bulldozers in the green belt if we allow leftwing agitators to take a bulldozer to our history, our traditions and our fundamental values?”, going on to refer to “pulling down statues …

The Right Word

When the invasion was over, the Writer was among the first of those arrested. His barbed words had been a thorn in the Dictator’s flesh for many years. In fact, he had not been productive for quite some time; but they didn’t know that. Invading armies are rarely up to date. The cell door slammed …

The Last of Sherlock

We’ve been rewatching the four series of Sherlock – the BBC series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman broadcast between 2010 and 2017: what has been called a Sherlock for the 21st century. More accurately, it might be called a Sherlock for the Cameron years. Certainly, the first series has a sort of quaint nostalgic …

Leo Baxendale and the Badtime Bedtime Books

I first got to know the name Leo Baxendale in 1976 when I was a small boy, and our parents bought for me and my brother (I think technically for my brother alone, but you know how it is) a cartoon book called Willy the Kid. It was anarchic, rude, mischievous, and very funny. A …

Being funny is not the same as being happy

Well, it isn’t, is it? It seems so obvious that it isn’t worth saying; the “tears of a clown” thing is a very old cliché indeed. And yet it’s something that still causes a lot of misunderstanding. Take, for instance, Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, premiered in 1946. The last movement is fast, bright, manic music, exciting …

Reading Isn’t Believing

Last year, during lockdown, I wrote a short novel. Since then, I’ve been trying to find a publisher for it. I’m still trying. Writing (I mean the creative sort) has been my main ambition and motivation for most of my life. I have written plays that have been performed in my home town without disaster. …

The Modernity of “Melincourt”

“How can I seriously call myself an enemy to slavery, while I indulge in in the luxuries that slavery acquires? How can the consumer of sugar pretend to throw on the grower of it the exclusive burden of their participated criminality?… If every individual in this kingdom, who is truly and conscientiously an enemy to …