On watching Columbo

Not The Sopranos, not The Wire. Forget Broadchurch, Brideshead and even the sainted Coronation Street. The greatest  television series of all time is, in my view, Columbo. The cop show about the Los Angeles homicide detective whom the TV listings persist in calling a “rumpled lieutenant” ran between 1968 and 2003 for 69 feature-length episodes. This  longevity… Read more »

On reading Dickens

CHARLES Dickens liked to refer to himself as The Inimitable; over the last few weeks he has been inescapable. In television adaptations and documentaries, radio serials, biographies, stage plays and skits, the novelist has been sliced, diced and served up to the nation. Some of the dishes at this feast of Dickens have been superlative… Read more »

The Stone Roses

I still have the T-shirt. Stretched, faded, full of holes; it is, if you can believe this, almost 23 years old. It’s awful, really, such an ugly design, bought from a bootlegger who was working his way along the queue for the gig. But the words on the back are why I’ve kept it; the… Read more »

Elliott Gould

STATELY, plump Elliott Gould answers the door in his boxer shorts; six foot three and built to match, he fills the frame like Samson between two pillars. He lives in an apartment in a quiet Los Angeles neighbourhood, the location of which – somewhat to the left of Beverly Hills – seems apt enough. “Armed Response” security notices… Read more »

Donna Tartt

DONNA Tartt is a little late. But that’s okay. Like the rest of the reading public, I have grown used to waiting for her. We have, after all, waited ten years for her to follow up her first novel The Secret History, a book which really ought to come packaged with an index of breathless… Read more »