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Tag Archives: Oscar Wilde

‘It is the living we should fear’

DISCLAIMER: Ten years ago, I reviewed Shehan Karunatilaka’s debut novel, Chinaman, for this newspaper. It was brilliant, I said, and everyone should buy it. I noted, though, for form’s sake, that I’d done some light proofreading of the manuscript, and hoped that this would not be taken either as cause or symptom of inoperable bias. […]

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. Football was a crime in England during the reign of Henry VIII. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Tuesday, October 2 1906 . The moon is up for longer than the sun. Your antivirus expires in 29 days. The Dogmata Theologica of Petavius are a work of incredible labour and compass. The steep limestone walls of a […]

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 […]

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. The average salary of professors at Dublin University is £530. — The Nelson Evening Mail, March 14 1907 . Wherever there is a fire that ravages everything in its path, the protea is the first thing to regenerate. Clive James once voluntarily interviewed the Spice Girls. Manchester has become ‘Womanchester’. Cineworld has landed in […]

Turning Japanese stomachs

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima Penguin, 170pp, £8.99 . Born two years after the Great Earthquake of 1923, in ‘not too good a section of Tokyo’, Kochan is a sickly child, brought up by stultifying parents and a morbid grandmother. His first reliable memory is of the ‘night-soil’ man, and he immediately becomes […]

The Top Fifteen Or So Wittiest Oscar Wilde Quotes – according to his Twitter output (last 24hrs)

1) ‘Think tattoos have to be bold and dark? Think again! Check out these stunning white ink tats!’ 2) ‘You can’t get your childhood back but you can recreate it! Check out these awesome recreation photos.’ 3) ‘Wanna see a real-life Barbie doll? This is not Photoshopped! You’ve gotta see this to believe it’ 4) […]

theASHtray, vol.8

This week starring Stanley Donwood, Radiohead, Vincent Van Gogh, The Wind-Up Merchant, Ric Jerrom, Oscar Wilde, Tony Hawks, Ireland, fridges, Guinness, extras, Tom Crean, Antarctic exploration, Felicity Aston, product placement, Land Rovers, Mark Ronson, Newsnight, the Olympics, Michaelangelo, and an infantile joke about muff-diving. — For theartsdesk