‘The St Lawrence is water, the Mississippi is muddy water, but the Thames is liquid history’ — Robert Burns MP, Nineteenth Century Exploring London? Understanding the city? Interesting and exciting things to see and think about? Why then, are we starting in Vauxhall of all places? (And for all you nature aficionados out there, the answer is not Vauxhall City Farm, although going to meet Jerry the alpaca is pretty off beat as far as London experiences go). Why then? Because Vauxhall plays host to London’s foundation stone: the river. Every building, street, brick and garden in London exists [...]
Latest Fiction
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…A Life… by Billy Bowring
M. is a believer and a mother. Her first child, N., could not be Read more →
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Dingo by Samantha Toh
1. A dingo is an animal that, some thousands of years ago, reverted from Read more →
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The Strawberry Garden by Heather Child
This is the kind of cafe where they have the Guardian in a wicker Read more →
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Axolotl by Ed Price
She reminded him of an axolotl. His axolotl, in fact: Jenny. It wasn’t because she Read more →
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Wood by Nick Chen
I became a tree hugger to meet other tree huggers, but it turned out they Read more →
NFTU Photo Stories exhibition
A collaborative experiment in writing, photography and design.
Limited edition prints available here
In 2012, NFTU will be growing the number of typographs in the exhibition and taking it on tour around the country at literary festivals and galleries. You can see all the typographs and read the stories here.
Limited edition prints available here
In 2012, NFTU will be growing the number of typographs in the exhibition and taking it on tour around the country at literary festivals and galleries. You can see all the typographs and read the stories here.
Latest Non-fiction
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Stage & Screen Theatre
Make Plays Not War: Is Theatre helping the protest movement?
by John Ironmonger Theatre doth protest so much methinks – since the rhetoric of 6th Century Athens, drama has been weaved together with the expression of political ideas. And dramatic activism is nothing new. A lazy name was coined in the 1960s: Guerilla Theatre, as journalists sought to describe a riot of outlandish performances in defiance of Capitalism and the Vietnam War. Now in the second decade of the new millennium, theatre in London takes countless forms. But it is more than a creative spark which spurs players from the stage to the street and from paying audiences to the [...]
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Alchemy
Bring me bottle of blood from Antarctica
The world does not need another beautiful photograph of an iceberg from Antarctica. So Anne Brodie brought back a bottle of blood instead.
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Crow
Waiting for cabins
There is too much noise. It’s too loud or it’s too messy or it’s too greedy. Should there be no sound in the air, but air itself, we’d talk less. There would be space to see things. There would be a hundred shades of white. And our hands would instinctively know what to do with our time. Our ears would actually prick. And people could hear their own sighs. In the sickness that is our unhealthy pace and paranoid loudness, emerges a clear antidote, and something called cabin porn. All of these spaces let us live properly. Waking up each [...]
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Cinematique
Impressions of a Film Buff…
It was in the building of Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek in Berlin where I really discovered the world of film. I paid a visit to the library by pure ‘coincidence’ – in search of some literature for my thesis. The sight of library members queuing with piles of DVDs was enough incentive for me to become a member and a regular visitor. What an amazing discovery that one could rent unlimited number of DVDs for free! At first, I got carried away and tried to blend in with crowds walking around with their huge DVD selections. Very quickly, I became a bit more [...]
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Columnists Crow Uncategorized
Observe: Frenchgirl by Jonathan Lawton
I think she is the sort of girl I always dreamed of meeting on a french exchange. She is the older sister of the brother I exchanged with. She ignored me at first but on my second weekend she let me come with her and her friends to one of her mates house where they drank vodka and passed a badly rolled spliff around. The next day I had my first hangover but she made me get in the back of her boyfriend’s old VW beetle and we drove to the countryside. She was smoking in the front cool as [...]
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Columnists Featured London Notes
Vauxhall
‘The St Lawrence is water, the Mississippi is muddy water, but the Thames is liquid history’ — Robert Burns MP, Nineteenth Century Exploring London? Understanding the city? Interesting and exciting things to see and think about? Why then, are we starting in Vauxhall of all places? (And for all you nature aficionados out there, the answer is not Vauxhall City Farm, although going to meet Jerry the alpaca is pretty off beat as far as London experiences go). Why then? Because Vauxhall plays host to London’s foundation stone: the river. Every building, street, brick and garden in London exists [...]
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Columnists Crow Uncategorized
Observe: richgirl
If your position in the world really depends that much on your point of view. We’re fucked if we’re to wonder about how it will be accommodated. Needing more than another slice of pie. It’s validation as if we were born with none. What we want from the world is defined by what we cannot afford. We want champagne because we need it. Tweet This Post
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Alchemy
Blood on a white wall: art gallery trauma
Alzheimer’s is so terrifying a disease that I’m scared that thinking about it will set off a chain reaction in my brain and I’ll develop the condition. I know that’s ridiculous. I know that’s not how the brain works. And yet my fear of the trauma unique to Alzheimer’s undercuts my rationalism. Right now in London, there’s a place I can go to think and talk about Alzheimer’s and its more abstract attacks on humanity – not just the way it erodes brain tissue, but what this does to our very souls.
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