Body of Evidence
She had a tape recording. In it, his voice was muffled, slurred from a night of heavy drinking, and at times inaudible from the rustling of the coat pocket in which she’d hidden the phone during their last conversation together. In it, her voice was noncommittal, quiet, deferential, almost apologe
Whippersnapper
You called the dog Whippersnapper because you could not remember its name. You were friends, allies of sorts, with your illicit trades under the tabletop: a corner of your cake slice exchanged for a wag of the dog’s tail or a stroke of its black head for a friendly grin. But you could not even [&h
Reclaiming the temple: Orthorexia and me
Disordered eating is not something I ever thought I might be susceptible to. I upheld misguided, but common, prejudices about eating disorders, especially anorexia, which I associated with teenage girls – provoked by the trends and standards in popular visual culture – attempting to reme
“Stop right now, if you can”: Interview with Clive James
Clive James is an Australian critic, poet, novelist and memoirist, best known for his television reviews and the autobiographical series ‘Unreliable Memoirs’. One of the most distinctive wits of the last century, he once described Barbara Cartland’s heavily-mascaraed eyes as resembling “two
‘Prophesy, Darkness, Play’: An Interview with Max Porter
“A is to B what C is to A plus B less C. Lovely.” This is the family dynamic of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter’s debut novel, a slim book ostensibly about the “grief” of its title. Yet things are not quite as they seem: a dead mum has been replaced by […]
Antigone of Syria
“Our two brothers on a single day, A wretched pair, with hands aimed at each other, Killing themselves, have shared a doom in common. And now we two, the last ones left—consider How much worse death will be for us if we Defy the law and flout the rulers’ vote and power.” This passage could [
Coffee With Michael Frayn
Search long enough and you’ll discover that there exist some neat patches of parkland on YouTube that haven’t been marred by the graffiti of endless Vevo commercials or the dog-shit vitriol of the comments box. One such sequestered glade is the modest archive of seventies BBC documentaries, a tr
One city, one night, one take
Sturla Brandth Grøvlen explains how he filmed 'Victoria' in one shot.
Kashing in on Feminism
“I have a theory,” a friend whispered to me in a conspiratorial tone, “Kim Kardashian is a genius.” This was not the first time I’d heard such an opinion. In recent years, the mainstream media has affected a habit of reducing feminist icon status to the success of rich, conventionally attr