Skip to content

Tag Archives: bookshops

Trouble at’ Mill

Notes on the life (and afterlife) of JS Mill, philosopher . The classical liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill was born and died this month – in, respectively, 1806 and 1873 – and in between he wrote (or co-wrote, with his wife, and then his step-daughter) On Liberty, Utilitarianism, Principles of Political Economy, Considerations of Representative Government, […]

In-line, online, and where to draw the line?

Notes on Colombo’s books and bookmen in the time of Covid-19. — For The Critic

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. An architect named Firth was found at a Weymouth inquest to have shot himself in the side with a toy cannon while temporarily insane. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Tuesday, December 22 1908 . The SAS have killed some people in Afghanistan. The Veneziana pizza was invented in the 1970s by Pizza Express. In […]

Booksheds

As Colombo emerges from the Covid lockdown, I go immediately to one of my favourite places. — For The Critic

Did The English Patient send me to Afghanistan?

Two nights from now, by way of (ahem) a birthday present, I will be attending a live-orchestra screening of The English Patient at the Albert Hall. I had invited an old friend, a raven-haired young lady (named in Debrett’s) of impossibly romantic tendency, who first exposed me to the film in, I’d say, about 1998 […]

Failure to launch?

To Daunt’s in Marylebone, last night, where former pretty-boy and nightclub bouncer (and Amorist ‘Fiascos’ columnist) Anthony McGowan launched his latest literary venture, The Art of Failing. Subtitled Notes from the Underdog, the book chronicles a year in the life of West Hampstead’s shambolic would-be flâneur, by way of library mishaps, bad packed lunches, and […]

23.10.12 – UPDATE (1)

1645 Pick up Derek Walcott’s Selected Poems in bookshop. p197 ‘the madman who tore Achille’s undershirt from one shoulder also tore at his heart.’ – FROM Omeros (1990)