The pretenders
Like a lot of essentially cautious people, I like my music to take some risks, play with fire and damn…
And then there were four
Where were you when you heard that Zayn Malik had left One Direction? No, me neither, but as my teenage…
End of the Rainbow
The golden age of pop music may be long gone, but the golden age of pop musicians’ obituaries is definitely…
Whose line is it anyway?
Songwriting credits are, as we know, not always to be trusted. Since the dawn of music publishing, there has always…
Lights flash — rockets go off — a star is born
The crucial thing to remember about the music business is that it’s a business. If you happen to be creating…
Blunt weapon
Only a fool would mess with James Blunt. As his Twitter followers know, he has a sharp wit, and, as…
Easy listening
There were two new albums I wanted for Christmas — the Bryan Ferry and the Pink Floyd — and to…
The power of hate
It’s all gone now, of course. Not just the magazines themselves, but the legendary bile of old-school rock criticism
A choice of humorous books
Nancy Mitford would not call them ‘toilet books’, that’s for certain. Loo books? Lavatory books? One or two people I…
Gospel truth
‘I’m starting to think that all of the world’s major problems can be solved with either oyster sauce or backing…
A box of squibs
Enough of big ideas and grand designs. Instead, here are 30 unusually small ideas from the giant pulsating brain of…
Queen of rom-com
I have come late to Nora Ephron — a little too late for her, anyway, as she died in 2012.…
Yes men
My favourite comment about the Scottish referendum came from the eminent comedian and novelist David Baddiel. ‘What if Yes wins,…
Power of one
As everybody in the world except me seems to have seen Kate Bush’s live shows — against all apparent arithmetical…
Roll out the barrel
‘He was a wise man who invented beer,’ said Plato, although I imagine he had changed his mind by the…
Confessional box
The TV chat show, if not actually dead, has been in intensive care for a while now, hooked up to…
Family ties
One of the many delightful aspects of having children is that you can get them to do things you are…
I, spy
There can’t have been this many books about the first world war since — just after the first world war.…
Keep it clean
I am still listening to the new Coldplay album, and liking it more and more, and not just because everyone…
Hopkins to the rescue
It’s a long time, a very, very long time, since I bought a Coldplay album. Has any band of the…
Simon says
Did Simon Heffer’s new book come out on St George’s Day? If not, it probably should have done. If we…
Not guilty
The film critic Anne Billson wrote a typically pugnacious piece recently about the phrase ‘guilty pleasures’, which has spread like…
More brickbats from the old buffer
After Dear Lupin and Dear Lumpy, here’s a slightly more prosaically titled collection of letters from Roger Mortimer, longtime racing…
Old man’s game
It is coming to something when relatively young pop stars die not of drugs or misadventure but, essentially, of old…
How many times have I told you?
As a sign of the way things have changed, nothing could better this. Hester Vaizey, Cambridge history don and ‘publishing…
