What do the following have in common: a Greek god with wings on his feet, the Parisian press that first published Nabokov’s Lolita, and the editor of The Maycomb Tribune from Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird? The answer is they share…
I like to feel very close to what happens to a face. I like the skin there, restless topography, curving, pulling, pinching, releasing, the nerve-grid beneath, the jaw as it slides over its hinge… I like all the things that…
In order to research my book How To Be A Public Author, I ended up meeting many Booker Prize-winning authors, in public. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds because I’m not particularly charismatic, nor socially blessed. In fact, most…
During your stay hold on to the present, because this will never be Paris in the 20s/40s/60s. You’ll need to ignore young men who have adopted names such as Buster. They’ll wear pork-pie hats. Confiscate their movable feasts. Read today’s…
For those of us who weren’t born into the French language there is the joy of an awful lot of learning to come if we’re ever going to speak it with any amount of fluency. But once you’re past the…