Uncle Spaso’s dog Sila waded through the snow ahead of us. She would disappear for a while, only to emerge again right in front of us, happily wagging her tail. Uncle Spaso said the dog …
Read the full story »Original short stories, comedy and poetry from the best writers both old and new
Reviewing film, theatre, comedy, books, music, art and poetry. All that and some interviews too
A showcase of the UK’s brightest and most illustrious illustrative talent
NFTU recommends the best plays, gigs, galleries, readings and films for you to go see this week
NFTU’s bloggers discuss books, film and even dating
Jeremy Hunt MP
In the first of a series, NftU arts blogger, Michael Amherst, quizzes Conservative Shadow Culture Minister, Jeremy Hunt, on the Tories policies for the arts.
Read the full story »
So, you’re a writer. You have written something you want other people to read. You would like it to become a book, with a cover and pages and on sale in bookshops (physical or virtual). …
By Jacques Testard
Lorin Stein is a senior editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux in New York City. He has edited, amongst other works, The Savage Detectives and 2666 (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in …
An occasional series where writers and creatives in different fields tell us how it feels.
99% perspiration, 1% representation
by Anna Clair
When I was seven years old, I remember being passionately jealous of Jayne Fisher, a child …
Shakespeare’s Globe recently announced its forthcoming production of Henry VIII, the play during which an errant cannon caught fire and eventually razed the original theatre to the ground. Assuming that bad luck can’t strike twice, the …
This week I’m looking at two short films. Neither of them is available to watch or download online. Neither of them is available to buy in HMV (although you can order Oscar and Jim through …
I suspect, dear readers, there are one or two of you who are writers too. Am I right? So, I’m thinking, it’s only fair that I offer a bit of an insight on these pages …
Tino Sehgal and Paris and the Avant-Garde at the Guggenheim
It looks like Notes From The Underground’s stock is rising in the US. This time around I did manage to secure not one but two press …
Speaking as a fairly new resident in World of Single, there are many great things about it which I’d either forgotten, or never really noticed back in my early 20s. And the greatest …
The Hostage
At the Southwark Playhouse until 20 February
Some plays are tightly constructed, pinned together with careful dialogue that is as focused as a pious monk on a Sunday. I have often considered this kind of …
‘The Road’, ‘The Lovely Bones’, ‘Alice in Wonderland’, ‘Percy Jackson’ and ‘A Single Man’, how come all films this year seem to be based on books? Why do the film people make so many movies …
I have a confession to make. I am a reformed TV book snob.
In the past, if I went to get my summer holiday ‘3 for 2’s, and there was a ‘Richard and Judy …
In the week of the UK release of A Single Man, Michael Amherst draws on reviews in his past blogs to respond to Philip Hensher’s feature in the Independent, ‘Move over, Mr Humphries: The Changing …
by Robin Cooke
We realise that a lot of our readers are aspiring writers, and book enthusiasts, so we thought that we should give you a round up of some of the competitions, prizes and events …
by Jacques Testard
Introduction: The idea is quite clearly set out above. I will hereby attempt to bring you an insight into New York City’s cultural happenings, covering just about anything from music to books and …
by Tristan Summerscale
BOOKS
PETER CAREY
Foyles Charing Cross
Tuesday February 2nd
Peter Carey has twice won the Man Booker Prize, and is the only person to have done that apart from South African gloomster J.M Coetzee. His new …
by Thomas Eckhardt
BOOKS
STORYTAILS
The Pangea Project
Sunday January 31
What kind of people would we be if we didn’t plug our supporters? Gabriella Apicella, who writes many film reviews for us has started her very own storytelling evening …
I have become invisible. That, or I’ve developed a hideous facial deformity, I’ve started exuding the tang of decomposing catfood and nobody dares tell me, or I’m suddenly dressing like a down-on-her-luck hooker … which …
Julian Jarrold’s Brideshead Revisited epitomises everything that is wrong with modern film. Indeed, I’ll go further: it epitomises everything that is wrong with modern art and culture. I have been saving this card, this little diatribe …
Or should that be ‘everyone’? I know there’s a difference, but which one is right? If they’re both ‘right’, which one is better? What do I really mean?
by Tristan Summerscale
THEATRE
MIDSUMMER (A PLAY WITH SONGS)
Soho Theatre, London, until 6th February 2010
‘Part Richard Curtis, part Irvine Welsh’, this play concerns two thirty-somethings, a rapacious divorce lawyer and an unsuccessful car dealer, sitting in …
When it’s a drink with a friend, of course. Or perhaps going to an exhibition, or the cinema, or a gig, or a show that you know they’d be interested in, so you call them, …
by Hannah Gilkes
Maureen Duffy (b. 1933 in Worthing, Sussex) is a notable contemporary British poet, playwright and novelist. She has also published a literary biography of Aphra Behn, and The Erotic World of Faery a …
As a high-profile magazine editor, many of our readers would be interested to know how you got to be where you are today?
Hard work, a nonchalance towards accepted norms of spelling and
grammar, and actimel.
Who …
by Hannah Gilkes
Maureen Duffy (b. 1933 in Worthing, Sussex) is a notable contemporary British poet, playwright and novelist. She has also published a literary biography of Aphra Behn, and The Erotic World of Faery a …
by Cathy Porter
“I must marry now or never! A wife at any price!” Count Tolstoy wrote in l862 in his diary shortly before he proposed to eighteen-year-old Sofia Behrs. Fifteen years older than she was, …
Part of the Photo Stories series co-edited by Clare Wigfall. Authors work from a photograph to produce a story of about 1000 words.
See Ellen just dripping all over this guy. This guy who seems …
by Hannah Gilkes
Maureen Duffy (b. 1933 in Worthing, Sussex) is a notable contemporary British poet, playwright and novelist. She has also published a literary biography of Aphra Behn, and The Erotic World of Faery a …
