Dark Tom

Christopher Ricks, 1 December 1983

Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley 1933-1980 
by Nicholas Mosley.
Secker, 323 pp., £8.95, October 1983, 0 436 28852 4
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Rules of the Game: Sir Oswald and Lady Cynthia Mosley 1896-1933 
by Nicholas Mosley.
Fontana, 274 pp., £2.50, October 1983, 0 00 636644 9
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... Rules of the Game spoke of him well nigh throughout by the name by which his friends knew him: Tom. Chapter One was called ‘Tom’; its first words were ‘My father Oswald Mosley’, whereupon the naming by relationship and by the name Oswald Mosley fell away. It had a disconcerting effect, this use throughout of ...

The Road to West Egg

Thomas Powers, 4 July 2013

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of ‘The Great Gatsby’ 
by Sarah Churchwell.
Virago, 306 pp., £16.99, June 2013, 978 1 84408 766 2
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The Great Gatsby 
directed by Baz Luhrmann.
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... be one of the greatest writers who have ever lived,’ Scott Fitzgerald said to his friend Edmund Wilson when they were just out of college, ‘don’t you?’ Wilson was the son of a lawyer, a bit chilly, a prodigious reader steeped in Plato and Dante. He thought Fitzgerald’s remark foolish – just what you might expect ...

Hoodoo Man

Francis Gooding: Dr John and ‘Gris-Gris’, 6 November 2025

Two-Headed Doctor: Listening for Ghosts in Dr John’s ‘Gris-Gris’ 
by David Toop.
Strange Attractor, 397 pp., £23, November 2024, 978 1 913689 60 5
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... that time a great rarity for a Black producer to be working in the world of white pop and rock – Tom Wilson, who produced Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Nico and the Velvet Underground, is the most overlooked figure here – and it was Sonny Bono who took the writing and production credits; on the back cover of Look at Us, the couple’s debut ...

That Wild Mercury Sound

Charles Nicholl: Dylan’s Decade, 1 December 2016

The Bootleg Series, Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965-66 
by Bob Dylan.
Columbia, £60, November 2015
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... on bass, but the first thing we hear is the lugubriously reassuring voice of the producer, Tom Wilson, announcing ‘“Dime Store” – Take 1’. This is one of a number of unfamiliar early titles, for these are songs still in the making. Thus ‘She Belongs to Me’ is first slated as ‘My Girl’ and later as ‘Worse than Money’; and ...

A Call to the Unionists

Garret FitzGerald, 12 March 1992

... Tom Wilson’s insight as a moderate Unionist into the Northern Ireland tragedy and his critique of my involvement with these events offers useful balance to my – inevitably – somewhat different position on these matters. There are, however, some points in his review upon which I should like to comment. First, as to Sunningdale ...