As my little corner of England grinds almost to a standstill under 8 inches of snow, I’m conscious that much of the Northern Hemisphere is also experiencing an unusually cold winter. Many of you might have noticed the story of the snowbound train in China, on which passengers were trapped for 30 hours. Of course, [...]

Picture of Leipzig ©2002 by James Martin Though I first learned this last year, I’ve kept mum until the official papers arrived verifying that I’d been granted a Guest Professorship at Leipzig University. That’s the Leipzig in Germany, with a university founded in 1409 no less, and it’s the Picador Guest Professorship for Literature in [...]

  British poet Ruth Padel has resigned a week after being appointed to Oxford University’s poetry chair and only days after her role in the smear campaign that eliminated her rival Derek Walcott. Walcott was the favorite for the 301-year-old post, which has been held by the likes of Robert Graves, until a campaign, highlighting [...]

The film version of Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons earned $4.7 m today, and $50.9 m since its release, but that is no consolation to Angels’ actor Stellan Skarsgard who called Brown “a terribly bad writer.” “… He had cliffhangers after every chapter which makes you continue reading,” said Swedish born Skarsgard, who plays the head [...]

Stephen King, the prince of the modern thriller and popular fiction, is famously well-read, and has been known to praise fellow writers whom he considers particularly worthy. So it is no surprise he singled out Olen’s ‘The Tourist’ for special mention as one of this summer’s must-read books.  Check out King’s review in which he calls ‘The [...]

A couple days ago, the New York Times ran a piece with the self-explanatory title, “In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth.” Though throughout my life I’ve been told that the study of humanities was in trouble, during my college time (late 80s-early 90s), I had the feeling that here was an overabundance of people, [...]

It’s often said that Hollywood stars experience death long before its physical onset. How often do we hear that some great star of the golden age has died, only to be surprised that they had been alive all this time. It can apply to other fields, of course, and it’s particularly striking when the person [...]

Though many of you have probably seen it, it’s worth linking to this New Yorker piece, on Late Bloomers, which looks at writers and artists who reach their pinnacle late in life, and those who reach it early. Malcolm Gladwell uses a study by economist David Galenson to show how the difference lies in the [...]

Catch 11 was one of the many titles considered by Joseph Heller for the book that eventually introduced the phrase Catch 22 into the English language (I wonder, what phrase was used previously for a lose-lose situation?). Catch 11 was dropped because of its similarity to the film, Ocean’s 11, which had just been released. [...]

News that Vladimir Nabokov’s son, Dmitri, plans to publish his dad’s last novel (unfinished before the great man’s death) raises for me the question: Given how hard it is to publish while alive, should one publish when dead? According to the Guardian, Dmitri Nabokov has wrestled with the pros and cons of releasing his father’s [...]

His head was a large pounding tub of phrases, Whence men would pick delites as boys pick daisies… Admired learning took his heads possession, And turned his wit a wandering in progression The poet, John Taylor, no fan, on Thomas Coryat, traveller, writer and wit: 1611. Next weekend my shameful inactivity on the Nomad should [...]

St Margaret’s Bay, Jan 2007

Having just watched Gibson’s Apocalypto, I immediately reflected on two other stories I’ve encountered recently, and suddenly began re-evaluating the priorities as a writer and a consumer of art: be it film, theatre, or literature. If you haven’t seen Apocalypto, I can attest that it is as violent and dark as critics have stated. But [...]

Kevin was kind enough to notice a 4-point list over at The National Review, under a pleasant bash of bestselling authors, on pop-fiction “Diamonds in the Rough Who Deserve to be READ”. It includes not only me but that bearded Scot Stuart MacBride (with whom I chatted at Harrogate), Steve Hamilton, and George Pelecanos (who [...]

Only death could silence the indefatigable cinematic voice of auteur American film maker Robert Altman, who died today at 81. Quentin Tarantino once said that Hollywood directors have a ten-year life span to spin their celluloid yarns before the industry discards them. In this sense, Altman was a rarity: not only did he base a [...]