Mary Beard minds her S, P, Q and R
Having rattled and routed Mark Antony and his bewitching Egyptian at the battle of Actium in 31 BC, Octavian was…
Proof that the British hardly ever had a stiff upper lip
The last time I cried was September 1989. That was my first week at public school. The reason I cried…
How cool is Britannia?
Is it true that, having lost an empire, we reinvented ourselves as an island of entertainers? Do we channel the…
Nimble-witted wanderer
It was a certain unforgettable ex-girlfriend, Harry Mount confesses — named only as ‘S’ in his dedication — who came…
Death of a screenwriter
Cinema is tough right now for writers. Thomas W. Hodgkinson reports from the front line at the Austin Film Festival
The driving force of an ageing rocker
Why do people talk about ‘experimenting’ with drugs when mostly they just mean that they’re doing them? Perhaps, as I…
A Blanche Dubois of a book
Thomas W. Hodgkinson finds John Lahr’s ‘stand-alone’ biography of Tennessee Williams as confused and unbalanced as Streetcar’s heroine
Flouting convention
Should one say ‘vicious circle’ or ‘vicious cycle’? That’s a question that just goes round and round inside my head.…
Don’t do as I do
Over the past 12 months, I’ve proposed to my girlfriend, moved house, got married, and become a father. The most…
The one who got away with it
Since the passing of Auberon Waugh, there haven’t been many really successful right-wing comedians. The Mayor of London is one.…
Sins of the fathers
I have a confession to make. I really enjoyed this book. It’s been a while since I admitted something of…
Unmade in Chelsea
Once below a time (to quote the man himself) the bloated poet Dylan Thomas slouched back to New York’s Chelsea…
Shame and blame
At the recent Austin Film Festival, at every ruminative panel or round-table discussion I attended, I slapped my copy of…
A Transylvanian notebook
Ehe-Gefängnis. The word, strictly speaking (which is how one should always speak), means ‘marriage prison’, and refers to an austere…
Doctor in a toga
In the first draft of the screenplay for the film Gladiator, the character to be played by Russell Crowe (‘father…
Beyond this, nothing
This may sound a little orientalist, but Tangier has some claim to being the most foreign city in the world.…
Set in a silver sea
‘Tom Island’ — that was the name I was given once by a girl I met on an island in…
