Sex in the Park
Rummaging around in an old hard drive one lockdown, I found this review (for Details ) of the Sex Pistols’ Finsbury Park reunion gig – a quarter of a century ago. Ah! The summer of ’96! When they were so… Read More »Sex in the Park
London
Bomb-Damaged London & Its Bomb-Damaged Kids
Saw Hue & Cry t’other night on the tellybox for the first time since I was a nipper. This recently digitally restored kid-oriented Ealing Comedy presents as its climax a London-wide mobilisation of boys (and a few tom-boys) for a… Read More »Bomb-Damaged London & Its Bomb-Damaged Kids
Harry Daley: A Beat Poet
I’ve just finished reading This Small Cloud, a wonderful posthumously published memoir by Harry Daley, a London copper in the early part of the 20th Century. Daley had a weakness, as you do, for young boxers and gangsters. And an… Read More »Harry Daley: A Beat Poet
The Union is Over Already – But ‘Britain’ is Still Keeping England Down
by Mark Simpson (Guardian Unlimited, April 8, 2007) It’s over. ‘Britain’ and ‘Britishness’ are politically moribund terms. The proof? Scottish-flavoured New Labour’s recent laughable attempts to resurrect “Britishness” as an “inclusive” post-Imperial identity. Not so much because they flopped as… Read More »The Union is Over Already – But ‘Britain’ is Still Keeping England Down
The Frattish American Wet Dream Conquering the World
By Mark Simpson (Arena Homme Plus, Spring 2007) The American Dream has turned into a nightmare. Count the shudders and the sweats in reel time: Bush. Iraq. Guantanamo Bay. Global Warming. Iran. Tom Cruise. Pop a Nytol or three with… Read More »The Frattish American Wet Dream Conquering the World