To the John Rylands library to see Marina Warner (does the Dame come before or after the Professor?) give her lecture Oracular Narrative: Timing and Truth Telling. This was a very pleasant event, with a drinks reception beforehand, and then the lecture itself in the historic reading room of the grand neo-Gothic building: ( Image:… Continue reading Marina Warner at The John Rylands Library
Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, enchants the visitor at every turn. And it’s not just the temples and shrines. The modern buildings, too, command attention, none more so than the railway station, which we saw quite a bit of in our travels. It’s a massive glass-fronted edifice in the centre of the city, and… Continue reading Big in Japan 4
I suppose it will have been in late 1971 or early 1972. I was meeting my girlfriend, but had stopped on the way to pick up my monthly copy of Zigzag, an odd, rather amateurishly produced alternative magazine that featured articles and interviews about mainly American rock music. It wasn’t like Sounds or NME, which… Continue reading Dan Hicks
I read, as I suppose many of my generation did, Eric Ambler’s The Mask of Dimitrios and Epitaph for a Spy when I was a teenager. They were exciting tales of action in a Europe on the brink of war, with heroes not of the John Buchan mould (I’d read the Richard Hannay books of… Continue reading Eric Ambler: The Levanter
To the Manchester Jewish Museum, on Holocaust Memorial Day, for a concert of music condemned and banned by the Nazis as “degenerate.” This was a bold move by the museum, which has decided to host more events to gain attention ahead of a big rebuilding programme. After a glass of (kosher, of course) wine, we… Continue reading Entartete Musik
Onto the Philosopher’s Walk in Kyoto. Note the position of the apostrophe: we are talking about one philosopher here, Nishida Kitaro, a professor at the university, who walked here daily in the nineteen twenties, and whose work, rather pleasingly, is described as “path-breaking.” Nishida’s best-known philosophical concept is “Absolute Nothingness” but it’s difficult to imagine… Continue reading Big in Japan 3
Shiny New Books 8 is now out. As usual, it features an eclectic range of book reviews both fiction and non-fiction, including my take on the fourth Paul Dark espionage novel. There’s also my guide to the fiction of Manchester. But don’t let that put you off – there’s lots of stuff here to whet… Continue reading Shiny New Books
The third volume in Jeremy Duns’s terrific Paul Dark series takes our troubled agent back to the beginning of his career, to meet his nemesis in a scenario where the world is in danger from a possible nuclear war. I would strongly urge you to read the first two volumes if you haven’t done already… Continue reading Jeremy Duns: The Moscow Option
We took the Shinkansen bullet train to Kyoto from Tokyo. These trains are an absolute delight: spacious, smooth, quiet, incredibly fast, and punctual to the second. Mobile phones are banned completely, except in the space between carriages, and even then, you are expected to keep it quiet. The result is a carefree and relaxing journey,… Continue reading Big in Japan 2
Not that long into this second instalment of the Paul Dark saga, I found myself reading an obscure article from the online archive of the Catholic newspaper The Tablet. I had been moved to check something in Duns’s text, because it sounded rather unlikely. Had there really been a small explosion in St Peter’s, Rome… Continue reading Jeremy Duns: Song of Treason