Revisiting her childhood quarter, Viveca Mellegård questions the direction Tehran is heading in a very personal look at developments in the Iranian capital.
Avant-Garde – What Avant-Garde?
The term ‘avant-garde’ continues to be used, in my opinion with far too much frequency, in discussions of contemporary…
What’s Missing from The Sahara
The Sahara is sui generis. The word alone is one of those rare, magical names we know even before…
Hamlet and Hamlet: ‘Sweet Prince’ or Scourge of Evil?
We have been blessed with a rich spate of Hamlets of late, a series of accounts of the title…
Dancing over the Abyss:
Nietzsche’s New Testament of the Self One must have chaos within to give birth to a dancing star. I…
The Wolves of Chernobyl
You ask about the wolves. The reports are unclear, but it is said that they are without number. When they…
The Clock of Life
Rough on my skin are the moments your absence turns more and more thin and sharp-spined are the cactuses…
Darwin in Mauritius
Of all the mysteries the elephant, he said – on whose back he took a strolling seasick ride south…
The Flame Trees of Trou aux Biches
Not wishing for a moment to be upstaged by clouds of blowsy blossom that cannot stay although they are the…
One-Armed Bandits i. m. D. P. 1950-2006
We were cutting the holly tree down to size, Lopping the branches and scything off leaves That pricked our fingers,…
Weak with the Dawn
Weak with the dawn, With a thin grey light seeping in Just below your absence and just below Everything…
The History of Herons
(Malpas, Truro) What force is at work scripting this egg yolk, Sculpting the wet tangle of the shelled bird?…
The Rape of Europa
A million fields between Amsterdam and Berlin, sewn together by hedgerows and fences into a limitless skin that covers…
Extra-Curricular
When I was fourteen I lost my soul in the great depression of the Seventies it slipped away in…
Extract from Dr. Watson’s War
Chapter One: 221b Baker Street It was the smell of the place. The rooms that I’d agreed to take…
If Only You Knew I Can See You
On the twenty-fourth of February 1909 my husband decided to kill me. I like to believe he had thought…
A Country of Words
NON-FICTION: AUTOBIOGRAPHY A Country of Words: A Palestinian Journey from the Refugee Camp to the Front Page, Abdel-Bari Atwan,…
The Ekphrasis of Philip Gross and Simon Denison
POETRY I Spy Pinhole Eye, poems by Philip Gross; photographs by Simon Denison, Cinnamon Press, 80pp, £11.99 Poems which…
New Collections
POETRY ‘We needed coffee but…’, Matthew Welton, Carcanet, 96pp, £9.95 ‘Voyaging Out’, Peter Abbs, Salt, 80pp, £12.99 ‘As I…
Venice: Pure City
NON-FICTION: TRAVEL Venice: Pure City, Peter Ackroyd, Chatto & Windus, 416pp, £25 Venice is light. Her finest painters have…
London’s First Arab: ‘Abd-al-Wahid ‘Anuri’s
Six Months in the City On the 15th August 1600 a sixteen-man Embassy from an Arab country entered London…
Reading in Captivity
I am frequently asked what I missed most during the years of my captivity as a hostage in the…
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