Why are you still here?

James Meek: Who owns Grimsby?, 23 April 2015

“... who is 72, has joined Ukip. He’s voted Labour, Conservative and Ukip in the past, but it will be Nigel Farage’s party for him this time. For Hardie, it’s not about immigration – there aren’t many immigrants in Grimsby – but about the European Union, and a lingering bitterness over the end of the old fishing days, and a sense that Labour has ...”

The End of British Farming

Andrew O’Hagan: British farming, 22 March 2001

“... used a bottle of prescription olive oil to clean the salad bowl. Now look!’ A line of tank-green bottles stretched into the distance. ‘Choice!’ she said.Supermarket people like to use certain words. When you are with them in the fruit department they all say ‘fresh’ and ‘juicy’ and ‘variety’ and ‘good farming practices’. (Or as head ...”

Something Rather Scandalous

Jean McNicol: The Loves of Rupert Brooke, 20 October 2016

Rupert Brooke: Life, Death and Myth 
by Nigel Jones.
Head of Zeus, 588 pp., £12, April 2015, 978 1 78185 703 8Show More
Fatal Glamour: The Life of Rupert Brooke 
by Paul Delany.
McGill-Queen’s, 380 pp., £28.99, March 2015, 978 0 7735 4557 1Show More
The Second I Saw You: The True Love Story of Rupert Brooke and Phyllis Gardner 
by Lorna C. Beckett.
British Library, 216 pp., £16.99, April 2015, 978 0 7123 5792 0Show More
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“... sanitised. Christopher Hassall was asked to write the authorised biography in part because, as Nigel Jones notes in his own biography of Brooke, Hassall’s lengthy Life of Eddie Marsh had managed ‘to avoid the topic of his subject’s homosexuality’ and he could therefore be relied on to be discreet. (It’s unfair to say that Hassall doesn’t tell ...”

On Thatcher

“... madonna of bother, into everlasting power.Iain Sinclair, 27 February 1992The picture​ which Nigel Lawson draws of Thatcher herself is a remarkable testimony to the manner in which her government’s grand strategy was determined. Increasingly, ideas were translated into policy via will, whim and pique. The advice of responsible ministers was superseded ...”

Diary

Iain Sinclair: Eccentric Pilgrims, 30 June 2016

“... syphilis of time, played so well, on an anvil of whitewashed cement, alongside a municipal bowling green, that it became the provocation for a pedestrian expedition testing the Brexit boundaries of a timeless mead-hall England, before the fleet of plundering Papist Normans came sailing over the horizon. Just as tabloid gangs of Albanian drug-trafficking white ...”

Madder Men

Hal Foster: Richard Hamilton on Richard Hamilton, 24 October 2019

Richard Hamilton: Introspective 
by Phillip Spectre.
König, 408 pp., £49, September 2019, 978 3 88375 695 0Show More
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“... formal study, Hamilton entered the Slade, where he met two future IG cronies, Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson. He was especially fond of Henderson, whom he found ‘well educated, quick-witted and streetwise, on friendly terms with just about everyone worth knowing in the art world of London, and blessed with a generosity of spirit that he showed by ...”

John Sturrock

Mary-Kay Wilmers, 21 September 2017

“... paper. John was the deputy editor, John Gross was the editor. Gross referred to John as the ‘sea-green incorruptible’ and you get the picture; it wasn’t a happy place to work in those days, though the friction between the two principals – the severity of one and the worldliness of the other – worked to the benefit of the paper. John was definitely ...”

Short Cuts

James Butler: Labour’s Complacency, 25 December 2025

“... unpopularity (a net negative approval rating of -61) and the sustained poll lead, since April, of Nigel Farage’s Reform. Both factors have shaped British politics over the past year. Starmer’s perceived fragility means he has made little use of his landslide majority. Difficult decisions have been postponed, or were deferred until last month’s ...”

Diary

Norman Buchan: In Defence of the Word, 1 October 1987

“... the press is free because it is free from government control. In parallel, the later Government Green Paper calls for a ‘lighter’ regulation in commercial radio. The Government simply cannot take on board that at the present time regulation is the means to secure diversity of opinion and diversity of programme. The truth is that the Peacock exemplar of ...”

Diary

Iain Sinclair: Out of Essex, 8 January 2004

“... near Rainham Marshes, rendered as a grid of delicately balanced reds and pinks, with just enough green to cancel the headache. This, so often, is how it works; synergy, they call it. You scratch my back. Matthews is a film and television editor of reputation: peer-group respect rather than disposable celebrity. She has contributed to some of the better ...”

Mischief Wrought

Stephen Sedley: The Compensation Culture Myth, 4 March 2021

Fake Law: The Truth about Justice in an Age of Lies 
by the Secret Barrister.
Picador, 400 pp., £20, September 2020, 978 1 5290 0994 1Show More
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“... tragic case of another British infant, Alfie Evans, which Fox News and Breitbart, assisted by Nigel Farage, characterised as the practice of eugenics by a state-run medical service.As to the health and safety canards (conkers banned in school playgrounds, sack races banned on sports days, circus artistes required to wear helmets, and on and on), the ...”

What Nanny Didn’t Tell Me

Bernard Porter: Simon Mann, 26 January 2012

Cry Havoc 
by Simon Mann.
John Blake, 351 pp., £19.99, November 2011, 978 1 84358 403 2Show More
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“... appears here, except as a hallucination while he’s in prison. ‘A Thing comes out: bright green, furry, long-legged … The size of a dinner plate, and very cross. It’s Mummy. I stamp. Squelch. Yuk.’ His nanny used to follow marching guardsmen when she took him out in his pram; later she introduced him to war comics and boys’ adventure ...”

Almost Alone

Andy Beckett: Tony Benn’s Beliefs, 25 September 2025

The Most Dangerous Man in Britain?: The Political Writing 
by Tony Benn.
Verso, 275 pp., £20, April, 978 1 80429 829 9Show More
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“... such as Brexit, the catastrophic premiership of Boris Johnson and the continuing rise of Nigel Farage. As a result, putting economic or social issues to a vote feels riskier than it did in Benn’s heyday, when there were fewer conspiracy theories circulating and more generally accepted political facts. How would workers’ control of a company ...”

Watching Me Watching Them Watching You

Andrew O’Hagan: Surveillance, 9 October 2003

“... where. Everybody’s doing it.’I sat in front of the screens beside McAlister’s colleague Nigel. In front of us were images of people going about their daily business: parking cars, walking dogs, standing in line, talking into phones, holding hands, spitting, running, standing still and looking at the sky. ...”

God’s Own

Angus Calder, 12 March 1992

Empire and English Character 
by Kathryn Tidrick.
Tauris, 338 pp., £24.95, August 1990, 1 85043 191 4Show More
Into Africa: The story of the East African Safari 
by Kenneth Cameron.
Constable, 229 pp., £14.95, June 1990, 0 09 469770 1Show More
Burton: Snow upon the Desert 
by Frank McLynn.
Murray, 428 pp., £19.95, September 1990, 0 7195 4818 7Show More
From the Sierras to the Pampas: Richard Burton’s Travels in the Americas, 1860-69 
by Frank McLynn.
Barrie and Jenkins, 258 pp., £16.99, July 1991, 0 7126 3789 3Show More
The Duke of Puddle Dock: Travels in the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles 
by Nigel Barley.
Viking, 276 pp., £16.99, March 1992, 0 670 83642 7Show More
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“... Patterson hunted them down. The railway climbed on, created a little town of corrugated iron and green canvas in an insect-ridden swamp fed by a little river called, in Masai, ‘Nairobi’, meaning ‘cold water’, and drove on to Lake Victoria. As Kenneth Cameron puts it, ‘East Africa had become safariland.’ I was disappointed not to see Cameron’s ...”
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