“If you don’t allow yourself to write characters who do disagreeable things–if you only allow yourself to write about what you would be glad for your readers to imitate in real life–then you’re pretty much constrained to characters who help little old ladies across the street and rescue cats from trees,” points out Lionel Shriver, […]
The word that keeps coming up, in conversation with Johnny Bramwell, lead singer and songwriter with Mancunians I am Kloot, is drama. Whether it be references to Harold Pinter, or the description of their latest album as “like Richard III as a character”, it’s clear that he, and indeed the band, have specific goals in […]
It's late April and the British Labour party are almost certain to win the next British general election. It has become not a case of 'if', but rather of 'by how much'. Browse through the 50 top achievements of Tony Blair's outgoing government, as listed by themselves and you are faced with an impressive picture […]
While A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian is ostensibly a comedy, and an effective one at that, it’s not without genre breaking moments, particularly in its portrayal of the aged. It’s the story of an elderly Ukrainian widower, a naturalised British citizen, who finds love, in the form of an economic migrant with “superior […]
In the year 2000, during restoration work, a rare and important mural was uncovered at the communal fountain of the Tuscan town of Massa Marittima. It was not necessarily a welcome surprise, at least at first, as this painting from the Middle Ages depicted a tree covered with phalluses. “At first when the painting was […]
From the TMO Archive – the legendary Greg Dulli talks to TMO about the Afghan Whigs, Nina Simone, and Pathos in songwriting.
&ldquoThis was an event like an apocalypse – says American jounalist William Nessen, describing accounts of the Tsunami given to him by local people in Aceh, Indonesia – Many people thought it was judgement day. The sea went dry for kilometres, some say for 5-7 kilometres, and then came in as a giant wall of […]
Heredity, the debut novel by Jenny Davidson, mixes a number of styles to produce a compelling, page-turning story that has been described as part detective novel, part twisted historical romance. It tells the story of Elizabeth Mann, a current day travel-writer/researcher, who, while in London, becomes obsessed with the historical character of Jonathan Wild, and […]
“And who’s gonna raise a hand When all we were taught to do was dance Who’ll be able to stand After this avalanche” Thea Gilmore – Avalanche If Pete Townshend felt provoked, by an overbearing post-war generation, to write My Generation exhorting his elders to “just fade away”, Thea Gilmore’s ire seems aimed as much, […]
“The truth is actually much more buffoonish than most conspiracy theorists believe”, explains Jon Ronson, the author of The men who stare at goats, a book that deals with the psychological branch of the US military machine. “The men who stare at goats deals with one of the maddest conspiracy theories there is, about powerful […]
Jim Crace is both flattered and amused that he’s become the subject of Academic study. “I’m flattered. I’d rather that there were academic books about me than there weren’t any – he says, in a down to earth tone before continuing to outline one of the stranger Academic analyses of his work – a Japanese […]
What kind of world was the Americas, before European colonists arrived? Advances in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, ecology, geography and history have combined to challenge many of the long-held theories about what pre-Columbian America was like, who inhabited it, and their origins. Science writer Charles C. Mann has followed these developments with interest and […]
Revisionists and romantics would have you believe that the Rolling Stones started when Mich Jagger bumped into Keith Richards, carrying a bunch of blues records, in Dartford railway station in 1960. It would be, though, just as easy to say that the Stones started in 1963 when Andrew Loog Oldham encountered Jagger, Richards, Jones, Wyman […]
[A Laos travelogue, from a journey taken in 2002] In the words of former Taoiseach of Ireland, Charles Haughey, the situation is “grotesque, unprecedented, bizarre and unbelievable”. It’s 10.30 at night in a bar on the outskirts of Muang Sing, a town itself on the outskirts of the rest of Laos, a country on the […]
It's disconcerting to have a conversation with Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men, through no fault of Bichlbaum's. Well, then again, it is his fault. After having seen The Yes Men movie, and Bichlbaum's various poker faced media stunts, there's always the suspicion in the back of your mind that he's somehow, to put it […]
