‘We’ll always have Paris,’ as Bogart famously drawled to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, alluding both to their own affair and the city’s enduring quality of romantic vivacity; its embodiment of Eros versus the forces of Thanatos, in this case represented by the Second World War. He doesn’t have to elaborate on what Paris symbolises; its superabundance of light and love, its promise of amorous adventure. Not many cities are so neatly metonymic. Yet the title […]
Poetry | Write It by Helen Mort
Because I can’t, a rat redrafts the lower reaches / of our house at night, cursive across high ledges, / forcing the bright idea of its body through masonry / to trace the lines of copper pipes. A huge buck, / gnawing plastic, caches of cat food, grazing on lintels. / With slivers of wood, he stories his kind: […]
Fiction | The Operated Englishman by Alex Pheby
It’s going to test our collective patience, but I’d like to take some time to talk about – I suppose eulogise – my old friend Gary ‘Little’ England(-er). As much as I’m able to, of course – he was so much more complicated than I could ever claim to be. It would take a real writer, an actor, an artist, a doctor, a fashion designer and probably a psychoanalyst all-in-one to do Gary justice – the things he said, the way he walked, the things he did, who he was. I’m not quite up to it […]
Essay | Reader, You’re Late by Rebecca Watson
When I talk about the experience of writing my debut novel, I often catch myself using an authority I do not recognise. This is what I was thinking, that is how it happened. I hear the assertion, and I find myself wondering: is that true? It is not that I lie. I believe what I say. But simultaneously, I am suspicious. Remembering is a form of repaving, and the trouble is, writing is a fickle practice. Not in the writing but the memory of it. What happened in the immediate is different […]