Interview – Learn Something Every Day

What a lovely idea from some lovely people. Every day visitors to their site send them facts, and they pick one to turn into an illustration. Manchester based design agency Young have signed a deal …

FLIP SEAT FRINGE – SLAPDASH AT THE OLD VIC TUNNELS

Although south of the river, the Old Vic is an establishment theatre, staging top revivals and adding a dazzle of well-funded glamour to the Southbank. But just recently it has branched out into the avant …

INTERVIEW – MAUREEN DUFFY

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 …

INTERVIEW – LONDON SHITE EDITOR RUPERT ATATAT

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 …

FILM – The Prophet

by Jemimah Steinfeld

One of the most memorable lines in classic prison drama The Shawshank Redemption is when Tim Robbins’ character, Andy Dufrasne avers: “The funny thing is – on the outside, I was an honest …

INTERVIEW – MIGUEL SYJUCO

by John Syfret

Miguel Syjuco cuts a trim and dapper figure when I meet him, dressed in light chinos and collared shirt, he is at ease in the sweltering heat of a glass-topped room in King’s …

PEOPLE – THE DIARIES OF SOFIA TOLSTOY

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, …

PRISM – BILLY COWIE

She lowers the dolly carefully into the tin bath. The water is tepid and a lot had been spilled between the two of them getting the tub outside, especially on the final heave onto the …

PHOTOGRAPHY – THE WHO, PROUD CENTRAL

by Tom Fraser

Colin Jones’ new exhibition of photographs invites viewers to hit the road, eavesdrop on recording sessions and share downtime with one of rock’s most influential acts. 

STRANGER CHRISTMAS

By Sophie Klimt

Every year around Christmas Uncle Ike would show upon our doorstep, wheezingly drunk, with his sleeping bag on his shoulder. In the morning we would wander downstairs to the frying smell …

FESTIVALS – LATITUDE 2010

By Cathy Thomas
And so another train journey down to Henham Park in Suffolk spent brimming with excitement at the prospect of live music, organic burgers and spray-painted sheep.
While Latitude was a much bigger festival …

I Miss Her by Viccy Adams

I play my grandmother’s memory loss in a game for closeness.
‘Gene Richards,’ she says.  ‘I was thinking about him the other day.’
‘He wasn’t at the funeral, was he?’ I say, because we had this conversation …

THEATRE – BLACK ALBUM, NATIONAL THEATRE

by Hannah Gilkes

In 1995 Hanif Kureishi looked back and saw the beginnings of a trend that was to prove prophetic. The Black Album follows the young Shahid from Kent as he starts university in London, …