Dickens
juliette.seibold
One Friday afternoon this spring, a friend led me to a low, dusty room in an education institute in the Afghan capital, Kabul. A few dozen men sat in neat rows. Most were young and wearing leather jackets, a few were older and in tweed jackets or suits. One wore a turban and chapan, a warm winter padded coat. All were keen writers who together are thriving members of a literary circle, a solace of imagination, creativity and wonder far from the fighting and the headlines of Afghanistan's bitter war.First, a young man opened the meeting with a Quranic chant. Then the first author Read more ...
theartsdesk
Comedy writer John Sullivan has died aged 64, writes Adam Sweeting, after spending six weeks in intensive care battling viral pneumonia. The creator of several hit comedy series for the BBC, Sullivan is guaranteed immortality for his masterpiece, Only Fools and Horses, which ran from 1981 to 2002. Featuring the escapades of the wide-boy south-London brothers, Rodney and Del Boy Trotter (Nicholas Lyndhurst and David Jason), it became one of the best-loved British comedies ever screened, and also gained a substantial international following. A 2004 poll named Only Fools... as the best Read more ...
fisun.guner
There have been exhibitions, indeed even a whole museum, dedicated to cleanliness: the Deutsches Hygiene Museum in Dresden, for instance (image 9), which was founded for the purpose of public education in hygiene and health, but which later embraced and diffused racist theories during the Nazi era. Yet there haven’t been many – or any, as far as I’m aware – devoted entirely to dirt. It’s all around us, yet historically we seem to have considered the subject unworthy of serious cultural examination. And the reasons for avoidance are just as interesting as the filthy matter currently under the Read more ...
tanika.gupta
A few years ago my brother and I were stuck in a traffic jam somewhere in London and a Rolls Royce drew up next to us with an elderly Asian gentleman at the wheel. He turned to us both and smiled sweetly before gliding on. For a blink of an eye, the driver morphed into our dad who died 20 years ago. My brother and I turned to each other and both said out loud, “Great Expectations.” It was our father’s dream to come to London and end up with a Rolls Royce and both myself and my brother mentally saluted the Asian gentleman’s smug realisation of our father’s ambition.Of all the Dickens novels I Read more ...
duncan.minshull
Walkers, like lovers of literature, are driven by the urge to explore, and writers have blessed their fictional characters with itchy feet since the earliest of narratives. Walks found in novels, short stories and even drama can have a multitude of meanings. The Burning Leg: Walking Scenes from Classic Fiction (Hesperus Press) collects extracts from Dickens and Dostoevsky, Proust and Poe, Kipling, Kafka and many more to show imaginations time and again set in motion by the simple act of walking. The following introduction is by the anthology's editor, Duncan Minshull Walkers have often Read more ...
ryan.gilbey
Christmas movies, like seasonal in-store promotions, really are arriving earlier every year. But despite being released before this month’s Catherine wheels have even started spinning, the new Disney version of A Christmas Carol has about it the desperate whiff of an end-of-line knock-off grabbed from a depleted branch of Argos just as the shutters are falling on Christmas Eve.With its motion-capture animation and state-of-the-art 3-D, as well as a simultaneous release in the eye-popping IMAX format, the film proves that it is possible to be both high-tech and superannuated. Because the Read more ...