A Journey in the South

Andrew O’Hagan: In New Orleans, 6 October 2005

... and the city’s poorest citizens are notoriously bad: last year, according to the columnist Jack Shafer, when 700 blank rounds were fired in one of those neighbourhoods, nobody called the police. New Orleans’s homicide rate is ten times the national average. ‘Unless the government works mightily to reverse migration,’ Shafer wrote, ‘a positive ...

The Lady in the Van

Alan Bennett, 26 October 1989

... guardsman of the 1880s; there was her Charlie Brown pitcher’s hat; and in June 1977 an octagonal straw table mat, tied on with a chiffon scarf and a bit of cardboard for the peak. She also went in for green eyeshades. Her skirts had a telescopic appearance as they had often been lengthened many times over by the simple expedient of sewing a strip of extra ...