Finding my way through the begrimed passages that connect the ventricular routes of the London Tube service beneath Piccadilly Circus Station the other day, I happened upon a poster advertising an upcoming open-air reenactment of the trial, torture and death of Christianity’s top rockstar superhero, Jesus H. Christ. The Passion of Jesus, a modern imagining…
On Hemingway, Bulls, Fascists and Aliens
In an attempt to remedy the onset of misanthropy, I have recently been assisting with a West End theatrical reworking of Ernest Hemingway’s break through novel, The Sun Also Rises. Admittedly, my contribution to the production is – at best – very limited, consisting mostly of weekend stage hand dogsbodery. Nonetheless, the experience provides a…
Vege-might
Leopold Bloom may have eaten with relish the “inner organs of beasts and fowl” but I fear my own meat eating days could be swiftly drawing to an end. The decision to quit meat has been in the pipeline for several years. Whilst grudgingly employed as a chef, I maintained that the moment I was able…
Misprints, Miscommunications and Lies
In his highly entertaining inspection of the many uses and abuses of the English language, The King’s English, Kingsley Amis addresses the struggle between “illiteracies and barbarisms, and pedantries and genteelisms” [1] by identifying two distinct sorts of offender of whose linguistic habits one is impelled to “deplore if not abhor.” Amis classifies members of…