As a coda to my earlier post about the perverse popularity enjoyed by  deranged far-right psychopath and piss-poor writer Ayn Rand, a very good article by Johann Hari in Slate expounds at greater and better length what I hinted at.

One longstanding aim achieved fairly recently – reading the play which gave the world “robot” to the world. R.U.R .[Rossum’s Universal Robots] is a 1921 play by Czech writer Karel Capek which introduced not just the term, but the whole concept...

A highly absorbing piece from the ever intriguing Mark Fisher of k-punk contrasts what he argues is the depressive aesthetic of Joy Division in contrast to the neurotic aesthetic of Morrissey. “It seems to me clear that Curtis was a denizen of the...

Simon Callow is interesting on Michael Slater’s expansive new biography of Charles Dickens. There, as he observes, was one busy fellow. Looks like it would be a good read one day, but I feel I should finish a few more of the novels rather than the...

Excellent news on approximately eighteen different levels - Alan Moore has decided to start a new underground magazine in his native Northampton.   ‘Dodgem Logic’, a 40-page colour magazine, is described by Mr Moore as providing “a splash of...