John Le Carré’s first novel, Call For The Dead, is a hybrid thing – a spy novel masquerading as a murder mystery, or perhaps a murder mystery masquerading as a spy novel. It feels appropriate that its genre is as slippery as a spy’s legend, but however you choose to classify it, it’s a thumping […]
John Le Carré’s fourth novel, The Looking Glass War, was a satirical rejoinder to all those who had, he felt, got the wrong end of the stick in respect of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Feeling that they had missed the point that the spy game was a futile, squalid, hopeless affair, […]
There are certain tropes that those of us of a certain age (cough…40ish…cough) were conditioned to expect in comedies and children’s films. The evil boss who gets their comeuppance at the end of the film, when the downbeaten hero realises they don’t have to put up with it and can Follow Their Dream instead, is […]
Be-caped and beguiling, Ryan Adams stages a triumphant solo return at the Barbican. Being a Ryan Adams fan can be a bit of a rollercoaster. There’s his habit of releasing everything he records, often for free, simply because he feels like it. For the record, I love it, but it drives some people nuts, and […]