Here’s to Crime

Actors, like artists, often reveal themselves in the jobs they take for the money – and in the projects that get away from them. Orson Welles is one of them. Enough has been written and said about a series of adverts he made in the latter half of his life already – enough to paint him forever as a drunken failure taking jobs cash in hand, drinking – a little too greedily – the free wine. An enemy of promise.

On White Space

My collection of essays, White Space, appeared in November. It collects work from more than half a decade, largely writings on books. Among descriptions of novels and anthologies of poetry that I thought were worth remarking upon, there is much contemporary politics. And in this radicalising age, there is much there too on extremism of all kinds.

The Professor and the Spy

A while ago, eagerly and secretly, a professor at Edinburgh University began a correspondence over email with a man he thought was a Russian spy. ‘Ivan’, as the spy eventually took signing himself, wanted to thank the professor, Paul McKeigue, for his sterling efforts on matters of mutual interest. Those efforts, Ivan assured the professor, were appreciated by the boys in his office in Moscow.

John le Carré: Cultivation by Choice

Many already miss John le Carré and their sadness at his loss will be expressed variously and at length. One aspect of all this is the loss of a voice – an admired voice in prose and in speech.

Jan Morris: A Writer’s Life as a Vivid Dream

Jan Morris, who died last week at the age of 94, may have lived one of the more various and accomplished lives on record. She was, in turn, a soldier, a newspaper correspondent with a number of scoops to her name, a fine memoirist, and a writer of books whose scope encompassed the world.

Robert Fisk: Correspondent or Storyteller?

Per many accounts, Robert Fisk, a journalist who died last week, was a notably courteous man. Since his death I have spoken to a number who met him and knew his work. They describe a journalist who spoke politely to crowds after events and at signings for his books, and who reacted to praise and attention with becoming satisfaction and pleasure.

Resignationism

There is an unfortunate trend in Britain’s politics which has coagulated into a rhetorical device – the latter used so often that it has congealed into reflex. It’s behind a few unfortunate recent cases, each of which have, in their own way, served to confuse, and to excite anger at precisely the most bottled-up and contorted moment of my life time.

You Must Die That I Might Be Free

There’s a vulgar little thought that keeps intruding when I am trying to think about anything else.

It’s of a piece with other things that have impeded my ability to think and to sit still for many weeks. And it touches on the same themes. But it is motivated less by concern and more by spite.

Between Two Stools

Four weeks ago, I was wide-eyed and crazy. I was accused by people who try to love me of isolating myself from society for no good reason, emerging periodically to talk in overexcited terms about this virus from China, and the duplicity of the Chinese state, and to be making entirely outlandish predictions about death tolls and the necessity of preparation for what was about to come.

On Internet Inanity

Online culture requires and creates an avalanche. The stuff of that avalanche has been given the ungainly title of ‘content’. The funniest tweet, the most brilliantly edited video, the most life-affirming podcast, and the greatest piece of online journalism – all are content, all are grist for the endlessly turning mill.