Monthly Archives: March 2003

This is how it begins

I don’t normally read much in the Sunday Times but this is a first-class, heart-breaking piece of war reporting. It is the story of how some American marines learned to kill Iraqi women and children. What makes it so fine … Continue reading Continue reading

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The hard life

I’m haunted by an item in the Mail‘s “Ephraim Hardcastle” diary. It says that Jon Snow, the newsreader, is having his memoirs published by HarperColllinsInterCap, and this is embarrassing because of his views on Murdoch. However, HarperCollins offered him Continue reading

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Author! Author!

I defy any of you to identify, without using a search engine, the person who said this: “As for me, my mind has long been made up. Getting rid of one side or expelling the other, both are equally impossible … Continue reading Continue reading

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more to come

OK, OK. I can’t get the cuttings blog working properly, and life’s too short to wrestle with CSS ona Saturday morning. So I will post a bunch of stuff from Conde Nast Traveller and Salon tomorrow. Continue reading

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catching up

The story I just posted really was the last quarrel I ever had with Anita. We’re friends now, both still married to to other people and living a thousand miles apart; and she really liked the story I wrote about … Continue reading Continue reading

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Growing up

The last quarrel I had with Anita we were sitting in pine needles by one of our favourite lakes. We were both safely married to other people by then, and chancing a reunion for all the tangled family: a picnic … Continue reading Continue reading

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Keith among the islands

What you get when you click more was published in the Independent on Sunday as a travel article, on March 15th, 1992. It isn’t, really. Continue reading

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Eeek!

I see that Ros Taylor has linked to this site from the Guardian’s travel section. I had better put some travel journalism up here, then. Give me half an hour, will you? I’d do it at once, but I was … Continue reading Continue reading

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the balance of forces

I was talking to Dr Longley yesterday and the conversation, unavoidably, came round to the war. “I was on the fence”, he said, “until the bloody French pushed me off. Now I think that anything that gets rid of Saddam … Continue reading Continue reading

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robust criticism

Even when I was very young and in a terrible hurry I don’t think I ever wrote anything quite this savage. I certainly never got it published. But in those days the web didn’t exist. Continue reading

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