Napoleon defeated, God dead, confidence up: How one London church reveals our secret history
This is a short story about what really happens to the things we think are permanent and powerful. And how they may not be at all what they seem. In 1818, the British Government announced a bonanza of one million pounds to be spent on celebrating victory over Napoleon. Buildings, events, whatever. But…
Zombies, punks & immigrants: What J.G. Ballard’s ‘High Rise’ says about Britain in 2015
It’s there if you look for it, snaking like mist around the tower blocks of West London, from Acton to Ladbroke Grove. An atmosphere. A message for us, maybe. This part of London was the inspiration and setting for JG Ballard as he wrote his 1975 dystopian novel High Rise. In…
Crime & corruption: Are you a terrorist? If Yes, please tick box below…
Ever get the creeping feeling that the fight against corruption, money laundering and tax avoidance are doomed? Well, you’d be right. And here – in one phone call – is why. I had a conversation with my bank about money laundering today. I denied everything, naturally. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? These…
Comment: Reign of Errors – The Merchant of Death story ends the way we all figured. Or does it?
Comment: Duwayne Brooks and the London riot story that never got written
Some stories write themselves. Some never get written, though they’re better by far. There’s something irreducible about them, too many loose ends. They don’t have neat beginnings and endings. They don’t fit our (journalists’, readers’) idea of the arc. Sometimes they’re just collected impressions. This one’s like that, and I’m setting it down here simply…
Video: “Cocaine coffee tables?!” CNN bosses, the craziest cop in Brazil, and me
It started perfectly innocently. I was out with a friend on Thursday, and the phone rang. I didn’t pick up – it was ten o’clock, and I’d worked my way through six large glasses of what I remember being an increasingly smooth Italian red, and a couple of bottles of Grolsch for good measure.…
Analysis: Chewbacca, Kurt Cobain & cheap thrills, or life in a post-Soviet West
What if…? is a popular parlour game among historians. How would the world look had World War Two ended differently? What would a Confederate-won Civil War have meant in a parallel 21st-century USA? What if the DDR’s army hadn’t wavered, and the Berlin Wall had never fallen? This week brought a chance to play…
Comment: “A chilling indictment of worldwide regulatory failure” – or, the book beneath the book
Five newspapers in the UK have given a unanimous four-star thumbs-up to Outlaws Inc. – and with some hearteningly perceptive reviews that took me a little by surprise. The Liverpool Echo, Edinburgh Evening News and Yorkshire Post among others, and especially this review (below), from the Manchester Evening News, hit the nail on the head…
What makes you think it’s not me, officer?
Happy memories of shopping for forged driving licences in Russia’s Urals…