We mark the anniversary of the birth of Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky, a great and, even now, much-loved writer in his homeland - even if he penned a fair bit of turgid, politicised rubbish. This year, the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky would have turned 120 years old. Given that he was born in ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Daniel Kalder
A true master is enjoying a revival of interest - today we take a particular look at Vasily Grossman's An Armenian Sketchbook. In 1998 I stumbled upon a Russian novel called Life and Fate. I was surprised because I had never heard of it or its author Vasily Grossman, yet by ... Read More...
Daniel Kalder reflects on the fate of world leaders, from cock of the walk one minute to feather duster the next. All is vanity! Recently I acquired a collection of LIFE magazines from 1971, and was curious to see what was making the news back then. You can probably guess some ... Read More...
From rearing horses to hungry sparrows - the provocations delivered to the world's dictators by members of the animal kingdom. The US comedian WC Fields famously said never to work with animals and children. I suspect President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan may have been thinking something similar earlier this year, when ... Read More...
Hello Ivan, got a new motor? Daniel Kalder finds that the notorious Lada is still selling well in some parts of the world... I first learned about the legendary Soviet Lada car in the mid-‘80s, when the cash-strapped USSR started exporting the notorious rust buckets to capitalist Europe in the hope ... Read More...
Pink Floyd's enduringly popular Dark Side of the Moon turned 40 this year. But, as Daniel Kalder explains, there was plenty of great rock music around in 1973... This March Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon turned 40 years old to some ballyhoo in the press. Apparently Sir Tom Stoppard ... Read More...
As the world trembles before the latest North Korean threat to nuke anyone dissing them, Daniel Kalder wonders whether he who controls the style of hair, controls the world. The other week, ifeng.com, a website run by Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV network, reported that there are 28 officially acceptable haircuts in ... Read More...
Ethno fusion: a good idea in principle but usually pretty horrible. Daniel Kalder drums up a fews exceptions... As a bored lad in 1990s small town Scotland my ear craved exotic sounds. I probably discovered “world” rhythms via Talking Heads LPs, before graduating to the harder stuff. And so I dabbled ... Read More...
Are rock side-projects always self-indulgent rubbish? Not necessarily, says Daniel Kalder, who can think of four non-rotten ones... Ah, the rock n’ roll side project: in any long career it’s difficult for a rock star to resist the temptation to indulge. Weary of their official identities, worn out by fan expectations, ... Read More...
Can Stalinism and good writing ever be compatible? As a fan of Soviet literature, one of my great frustrations is the lack of good writing from a pro-Stalin perspective. There is no shortage of books about the evils of Stalin and the system he created- Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov and Bulgakov all spring ... Read More...
