When not engaged in things Burgessian in Malaysia, we had the chance to wander around Kuala Lumpur. I think the term “City of Contrasts” might have been minted for it. The high tech, ultra-modern cityscape, symbolised by the Petronas Towers, lives cheek-by-jowl with the remnants of the colonial past, and reminders of the cultural diversity… Continue reading Monkeys, Tigers and Temples
…is probably a good title for an article I shall write about my experience addressing the old boys of Malay College on the subject of their old teacher John Anthony Burgess Wilson. I hadn’t anticipated the scale of the event, though I had a suspicion when we arrived early and saw the banners.Here’s one: Sharon… Continue reading Mr Wilson’s Old Boys
I’ve been east before, of course. Why, only last year, I holidayed in Aldeburgh. But this is a bit different. I’m in Malaysia as the guest of uberblogger and Kuala Lumpur literary scene maven, Sharon Bakar. My mission is to give a couple of talks about Anthony Burgess, first to the old boys of Malay… Continue reading East
“It is so immense, I have no words for it” was T.S. Eliot’s reaction to Wyndham Lewis’s The Apes of God. Old Tom was possibly just relieved that he had escaped being skewered on Lewis’s satirical blade, unlike virtually everyone else in the precious hothouse world of the London literary scene in the twenties. I… Continue reading Cultural Amnesia
In a heartwarming Christmas story, Will Smith, an actor (and therefore someone on whose every word we should hang, especially as he has said he wants to be president one day) says that Hitler was essentially a good person. In other news, the Pope suggests that Lucifer wasn’t such a bad guy really, and George… Continue reading This man wants to be president
I enjoyed reading this reissue of a 1938 novel, now published in Persephone’s smart grey livery. It’s a tale of one day, but isn’t a Mrs Dalloway or Ulysses. The eponymous Miss P is a timid, dowdy failed governess who finds herself by accident plunged into a demi-monde of bright young things, night-clubs and all… Continue reading Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day
Thanks to my Belgian correspondent Yves Buelens for alerting me to this. Incroyable, mon ami…
Thanks to Francessa for pointing this out to me. I don’t feel like a genius, and Stephen Fry makes me feel inadequate, Anonymous, but this woman- who is some sort of celebrity in the US apparently- plumbs new depths of dumbness.
On the shared items bit, there’s an article from John’s blog about the blog readability thing. It points out that the code you enter to get the badge also contains a link to a cash advance site, thus helping that site to rise up the Google ratings. I had actually spotted that, so I removed… Continue reading Not a genius
In the continuing fiasco about the lost data, HMRC has now offered a reward of £20,000 for the return of the missing discs. This after police searched municipal waste dumps to find them. In other news, the discs brought by a mechanic from Maclaren’s formula 1 team to his new employers Renualt “have been returned”.… Continue reading Am I missing something?