Monthly Archives: July 2010

Londons of the Mind (Dissident Editions)

The second and longest of the three texts posted here includes the account of a pilgrimage to an underground mosque in the deserts of southern Kazakhstan, undertaken quite by chance on July 7th 2005, the day of the London Bombings. Either side of it is an article about EU enlargement and the piece I was actually  in Kazakhstan to write.    I […]

With Mrs Dalloway in Ukraine (Dissident Editions)

The ship’s cook on the night-train south was travelling home after four months at sea with an enormous maroon suitcase full of presents…

How Not to do an MA on George Orwell

Any English—speaker to whom Vaclav Havel has mattered owes a debt they’re probably unaware of to Paul Wilson. His work as the Czech writer’s translator began thirty years ago but I discover, over a cup of coffee off Russell Square, that he first came to London from his native Canada ten years before that, to […]

Lady Chatterley’s Defendant – London Magazine & Three Monkeys Online

An article written about Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin books, originally published in London Magazine, and subsequently in the online current affairs/arts magazine Three Monkeys Online For the full article, click here. Brief extract below: Even those closest to Allen Lane could never work out how many parts missionary he was to how many […]