A S H Smyth

Author Archives: A S H Smyth

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 27, 2020

. A banker’s license in the United Kingdom costs £30 per annum. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Friday, July 17 1908 . Sri Lanka has only 500 cases of the Coronavirus. Germany has no elite universities. There are a lot of porno videos featuring Scarlett Johansson’s face. Mexico City is a good place to be an […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged America, army, boys, Chaucer, coronavirus, Danes, education, finance, Genghis Khan, Germany, Hamlet, health, Journalism, Mexico, Muslims, Nelson Evening Mail, Olympics, pornography, potatoes, satire, Scarlett Johansson, Scooby-Doo, Simone Biles, space travel, sport, Sri Lanka, Søren Kierkegaard, the internet, the Maldives, The Spectator, the UK, writers | Comments (0)

The Pelican

Saturday, April 25, 2020

Or; Some Further Notes Towards the Bestiary To the researches of the antiquary and scholar Jorge Luis ‘Vintage’ Borges, a few points offer further context on that most peripatetic of birds in this, our present century. . Learned reports come from South Asia, where the spotted-bill Filipino pelican (phillipensis) is found, with no small irony, only in Cambodia, the Indian peninsular, and in Sri Lanka (or the contemporary […]

Filed in Fictions | Tagged America, animals, army, babies, basketball, Borges, British Library, Cambodia, Captain Scott, children, Colombo, Corpus Christi College, daughters, death, Egypt, employment, fables, food, Gartagena, General John Guise, Hebrew, hieroglyphs, Horapollo, India, Jesuits, John Grisham, Joseph Hall, King Lear, murder, oil, pelican, Post-modern Bestiary, psychology, Roald Dahl, Spain, Sri Lanka, St James's Palace, St James's Park, St Jerome, stupidity, the Bible, The Spectator, Thomas Aquinas, US Supreme Court | Comments (0)

‘Beauty retire’ – or; Some notes on a portrait of Samuel Pepys

Monday, April 20, 2020

The odd (and possibly inconsequential) story of Pepys’s portrait, his song, and his relationship with Mrs Knepp. — For The Critic

Filed in feature, Journalism | Tagged composition, Elizabeth Knepp, fire, friends, health, John Hayls, music, National Portrait Gallery, Oliver Cromwell, opera, Pelham Humfrey, portraits, Royal Navy, Samuel Pepys, sex, singing, The Athenaeum, The Critic, the Royal Society, William Davenant, women | Comments (0)

Peak fitness: a virtual expedition diary

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Climbing a mountain, lest I start climbing the walls In January, I promised a visiting Reservist mate that we’d climb Adam’s Peak. That plan was scotched when, days before he landed, I went down with dengue fever. But I’d done Adam’s Peak before (the first time, Christmas ’04, probably saved my life when the tsunami struck…), and […]

Filed in feature, Journalism | Tagged Adam's Peak, Adidas, army, boredom, Buddhism, Christianity, cigars, coffee, Colombo, David Balfour, David Sharp, Everest, Fa-Hsien, Forrest Gump, health, Hinduism, Ibn Battuta, Islam, Marco Polo, meteorology, mosquitoes, mountaineering, music, Neighbours, podcasts, River Kwai, Sinhala, Spectator, Sri Lanka, stairs, Tamil, the Bible, The Mahavamsa, the Matterhorn, The West Wing, Thomas Tallis, Zumba | Comments (1)

Hello, Mrs Merkel

Saturday, April 11, 2020

An n+(SamsungGalaxyS)7 poem for Padraig Reidy . Hello, Mrs Merkel. This is your mum, your best friend. I have found a copy of Pepys on the stairs, which belongs to you. (My great-grandfathers!! I missed your call when unloading.) I will have the whole set redelivered to you when I get home. Thank you. Freya.

Filed in Poetry | Tagged Angel Merkel, books, friends, great-grandfathers, n+S7, Padraig Reidy, phones, Samuel Pepys | Comments (0)

‘It is the living we should fear’

Sunday, March 29, 2020

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. […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Tagged BBC, children, Colombo, Commonwealth Book Prize, cousins, cricket, death, DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, Elvis Presley, Gratiaen Award, Herodotus, independence, Marlon James, Marxism, Michael Ondaatje, Nietzsche, novels, Oscar Wilde, pangolins, Penguin India, photography, Richard de Zoysa, Shehan Karunatilaka, Singlish, Sinhala, Sri Lanka, Sunday Times (SL), The Mahavamsa, The Matrix, war, Wisden | Comments (0)

difficult second from bottom

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

difficult second album difficult second child difficult second trimester difficult second album syndrome difficult second pregnancy Only Connect: The Difficult Second Quiz Book, by Jack Waley-Cohen difficult second interview questions difficult second baby difficult second coming difficult second novel .

Filed in Poetry | Tagged babies, difficult second album, Found poetry, Google search results, Jack Waley-Cohen, music, novels, quizzes, the internet, the Messiah | Comments (0)

Living in a ghost town

Sunday, March 8, 2020

Ten years ago, I wrote the world’s first review of Chinaman, for the Sri Lankan Sunday Times. Last week, I interviewed Shehan Karunatilaka at the launch of his new novel, Chats with the Dead, at Barefoot Gallery. Here are the (brutally-abbreviated) highlights of those proceedings. — For The Sunday Times (SL)

Filed in interview, Journalism | Tagged Barefoot, books, fiction, Shehan Karunatilaka, Sri Lanka, Sunday Times (SL) | Comments (0)

Boursin – the lost advertisement

Friday, February 14, 2020

I love you. Really. Truly: je t’adore. But when I make our lunch, I still put more cheese in my sandwich than in yours. — For Roar Media

Filed in Poetry | Tagged Boursin, cheese, love, men, Roar Media, Valentine's Day, women | Comments (0)

Selassie come home

Thursday, February 6, 2020

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste Canongate, £16.99, pp. 428 . In 1935 the troops of Benito Mussolini’s sinister-clownish Roman Empire II invaded Ethiopia, in large part out of spite for Italy’s embarrassing defeat there 40 years before. Initially largely uncontested – thanks both to emperor Haile Selassie’s desperate faith in international brotherhood and to […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Tagged Abysinnia, Adwa, Andy McNab, Canongate, death, dragons, Ethiopia, fiction, gas, Haile Selassie, history, Homer, Italians, Maaza Mengiste, Mussolini, photography, sex, the Bible, the Derg, The Spectator, Verdi, war, women, WW2 | Comments (0)

Author Archives: A S H Smyth

NEWS AT A GLANCE

The Pelican

‘Beauty retire’ – or; Some notes on a portrait of Samuel Pepys

Peak fitness: a virtual expedition diary

Hello, Mrs Merkel

‘It is the living we should fear’

difficult second from bottom

Living in a ghost town

Boursin – the lost advertisement

Selassie come home

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