David Blackburn

Across the literary pages: Grey and dirty

Belle de Jour has returned for another series. Well, that’s not wholly true. Dr Brooke Magnati, the forensic scientist who worked as a high-class tart during her PhD course, has written a book called The Sex Myth. It blends science and statistical analysis with her intimate knowledge of prostitution to challenge received wisdom about the

How serious is Miliband?

The Tories reckon that Ed Miliband’s proposed donation cap of £5,000 is a con that will hit their funding every year, while preserving Labour’s funds except at election time thanks to the union levy being exempt. Housing minister and regular attack-dog Grant Shapps laid out the party’s position on Andrew Neil’s BBC Sunday Politics show earlier today.

The politics of taking big money out of politics

Ed Miliband is nothing if not persistent. Party funding has been a running theme of his leadership, necessitated by his cosy relationship with the unions. He has returned to the subject today, with a blog post and an appearance on the Andrew Marr Show. The news is that Miliband wants to cap donations from individuals,

The charity row intensifies

David Cameron finds himself in the midst of a blue-on-blue barney over the charity tax, which has prompted rumours that ministers may dilute the current proposals by adopting an American-style legacy deal. Tory party treasurer Lord Fink has said that the proposed changes would ‘put people off giving’, and some boisterous Conservative MPs are openly

The art of fiction: the return of 007

Bond is back. William Boyd has agreed to don the garb of Ian Fleming and write the latest tale in 007’s story. Boyd will not be aping Fleming’s style. The recent franchise revivals by Sebastian Faulks and Jeffrey Deaver are singularly different to each other and the original canon, while remaining faithful to the (anti-)hero

The KJV on Easter

I wanted to find a YouTube clip of a classical British actor reading of Christ’s Passion from the KJV. There must be such a thing, but I can’t find it among the morass of American, Spanish and Pentecostal recordings. That seems to signify the growing irrelevance of Anglicanism and Englishness in this digital world. But,

Evgeny Morozov: Digital snooping is a security risk

Acclaimed author Evgeny Morozov is in London promoting the new edition of his book, The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World. It argues that internet freedom is an illusion and that everyone’s freedom is at stake. It is timely, then, that his trip has coincided with the web surveillance row that has been shaking the coalition. Morozov

Fictionalising totalitarianism

Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room gave Hilary Mantel and J.M. Coetzee some stern competition on the 2009 Booker shortlist. Mawer’s evocation of place stays long in the memory, but his crowning achievement was the description of the glass room itself — a minimalist house, built in the countryside above Prague, through which the savage history of 20th

Trans-Atlantic rivalries

Everyone remembers an inspiring teacher. The teacher who sticks in my mind was a bearded sage who loved Hardy and celebrated Winterval. I know in hindsight that he was a self-indulgent charlatan; but his wide-reading and enthusiasm were enthralling. That last quality made him a good teacher as well as a memorable one: it encouraged

Across the literary pages | 2 April 2012

Ben Macintyre is back. Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies is the last instalment in his trilogy about British espionage in World War Two, following the hugely successful Agent Zig-Zag and Operation Mincemeat. In Double Cross, Macintrye tells of how a cabal of eccentric double agents hoodwinked the Nazis into believing that the allied

The art of fiction: Potter power

Voldemort was second division as an adversary; Amazon was Harry Potter’s most implacable foe. But the bespectacled wizard has seen off the virtual giant. The major books story this week is the arrival of official eBook editions of the Harry Potter novels. But these books are not for sale through Amazon’s e-commerce system (or Barnes

Go west… middle aged man

The march of David Mitchell continues. The author of Cloud Atlas and other acclaimed novels has won the American Academy of Arts and Letters’s E.M. Forster Award, worth a princely $20,000. The prize is intended to assist a ‘young writer from the United Kingdom or Ireland for a stay in the United States.’ Every little

Great literary feuds: Updike vs Wolfe

Everywhere one goes these days, people are talking about John Updike. Death, it seems, concentrates the mind. Updike died more than 2 years ago, but he is the talk of the town. His name crops up at book launches and at literary events around London, usually accompanied by words like ‘genius’ or ‘under-appreciated’. That last

Across the literary pages: when Tony met Ian McEwan

Guardian HQ visited the future this weekend. The newspaper group hosted its inaugural ‘Open Weekend’ — a ‘festival of debates, workshops, music, comedy, poetry, food and fun’, according to the blurb. There was live music (banjos and interpretative dance, naturally). A farmers’ market ran along the adjacent canal and a selection of seedlings for sale from

The dishonour of the Second World War

On 13th March 1938, judgment was passed in the political show trial of Nikolai Bukharin, former head of the Soviet Politburo. He was sentenced to death. Bukharin was taken in silence from the dock to the exit to the cells. He paused at the door and cast his eyes up to the gallery that contained

Taxing books

There’s a cracking story in the Bookseller this morning. The Publisher’s Association is calling on the government to cut VAT on eBooks to the zero rate enjoyed by print books. eBooks currently attract 20 per cent VAT, whereas print books are exempt on the grounds that they promote education. The Publishers’ Association complains that eBooks

Battling through Budget Day with WSC

Don’t be ashamed if you can’t understand the Budget. Economics is a notoriously tricky business. Even chancellors of the exchequer find themselves flailing about in the dark, dependent on the guidance of others. Winston Churchill explained his disastrous policy of returning sterling to the Gold Standard in 1925, by writing: ‘I had no special comprehension

Brightening your commute

Attention all those who commute through King’s Cross. A new bookshop has opened on the concourse near platforms 9-11, next to the shrine for Platform 9¾ of Harry Potter fame.  This is the first Watermark store to open in Europe. Watermark is an Australian firm that specialises in filling small spaces in major travel hubs.

Paxman’s rogues, villains and eccentrics

Isn’t Paxo’s series on the British Empire brilliant TV? Gone is the weary contempt that he wears on Newsnight. Instead, he is visibly enthused by talking to ordinary people in far flung lands. Paxman isn’t telling a new story, but he’s a gifted spinner of old yarns. Pottering around a spice market in Calcutta, going to the races in Hong

Across the literary pages: language games

Noam Chomsky versus Daniel Everett, it is a literary spat with a difference: they specialise in language. Chomsky is the high priest of modern linguistics, progenitor of ‘universal grammar’. Everett has spent 30 years among remote Amazonian tribes and concludes that language is learned. He says that it is unique to a specific culture, which