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I spent part of last summer writing a long review of Timothy Neat’s two volume biography of Hamish Henderson, the poet and campaigner who made such a profound contribution to the Scottish folk revival in the 1950s and 1960s. The review appears in the London Review of Books, issue dated 3 November 2011.

I think it was in 1992 that I first met Emanuel Litvinoff. I had for some time been aware of his marvellous memoir of Jewish Whitechapel, Journey Through a Small Planet (1972), but I had never found a way of including a discussion of it in the book I was writing about East London at [...]

His new novel Ghost Milk is still a couple of months from publication, but I will be talking with Sinclair – about “not going to China”, the 2012 Olympics and other London matters – at Foyles Bookshop in Charing Cross Road at 6.30 pm. Details»

     At 13.15 on Thursday this week, I will be talking at the National Portrait Gallery, London. While providing a wider background to the visits of 1954, I will be concentrating on the experiences of  the three British artists among the visitors: Denis Mathews, who travelled as Secretary of the Contemporary Art Society;  Paul Hogarth, who was [...]

Dear John»  May I be a national irritant instead?

“The Thread” is a series of discussions run by the London Consortium on Resonance 104.4fm. This programme, entitled “How to Hide” and broadcast on 22 March, was presented by James Wilkes and took the form of a conversation with Sophie Nield, Synnove Fredericks and myself – about camouflage and related matters.

A public lecture delivered at the Architectural Association in London on 8 February 2011.