Crafty Postmodernism?

Postmodernism became enmeshed in the commercial culture it originally set out to critique. Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 opens at the V&A today – and money is a major theme. The exhibition includes one of Warhol’s famous pop art dollar signs, from 1981, as a testament to this. And a ... Read More...

The Slang Guide to London: Piccadilly

Jonathon Green continues his remarkable slang tour of London with a stroll down the Dilly, taking care to avoid a dose of the Piccadilly cramp... I’m Gilbert the Filbert, the knut with a k, The pride of Piccadilly, the blasé  roué. Oh Hades! the Ladies who leave their wooden huts,  For Gilbert the Filbert, ... Read More...

Clemence Dane – One of Life’s Innocents

As a cheery prelude to Jonathon Green's column on slang this afternoon, Nige introduces a playwright who had no grasp of it at all - a lady for whom it was "second nature" to use "correctly, in a literary sense," the words 'erection', 'tool' and 'spunk'... Clemence Dane (born Winifred Ashton), ... Read More...

Dic Lit: Islam Karimov

After a well-deserved break from reading the works of maniacal dictators, Daniel Kalder continues his popular series. Today we meet an authoritarian despot who in his writings manages to do a passable imitation of a human being. Islam Karimov (b.1938) was appointed General Secretary of Uzbekistan's Communist party by Mikhail Gorbachev ... Read More...

Trash People and Richter’s First Wife, Nude

When Malty discovers that his be-mulleted German businessman pal Willi bears a startling resemblance to the conceptual artist Hans-Jürgen Schult, it leads him on a meandering philosophical journey that finishes up with Richter's nude wife... This is not about Willi except that were it not for him, I may have ignored ... Read More...