American dream
David Blackburn 6:10pm 
Occasionally, the New York Times’ podcasts are unmissable. Their recent exchange with Christopher Hitchens falls into the category. Hitchens is revered in America, but he is not an adoptive American. His identification with that country exceeds the administrative banalities of changing a passport. Slightly absurdly, the adolescent Hitchens ‘dreamt’ of being a writer and of visiting America. He realised that those two desires were one need as he grew older.
The Amis, Hitchens, McEwan and Fenton literary clique of the Seventies has entered popular mythology. Angela Gorgas exhibited her photographic record...
Not since Isandlwana have English redcoats received such a drubbing in South Africa. In fact the 24th Foot, massacred by Zulus armed with spears, came off better than the England football team. Despair, anger, disbelief, the usual reactions to an England World Cup exit, have been overridden by a guttural belly-laugh. It is a wide gap between tragedy and farce but England forded it. Incompetent officials are by the way when a team fails to defend a goal kick, or finds its two centre-halves holidaying near the touchline, or surrenders possession in the opposition...
I’m in Stockholm today to celebrate the summer solstice. It’s a magical part of the year, best illustrated by the newspaper column (below) giving times for sunrise and sunset in various parts of Sweden. In 
Yann Martel is ambitious. After the phenomenal success of Life of Pi, he has laboured for 8 years over 
Confession time: I’ve never been to Glastonbury and I don’t want to go. That’s typically cantankerous and misanthropic of me, but there we are. Just the word ‘Glastonbury’ recalls my sole previous experience at a music festival. Reading is an awful squat at the best of times; with the addition of mud, sweat and ‘other people’ it’s a hell-hole – even Slough is preferable. 
Without need of an occupation, a small band of the well-born lit up the 1920s with mischief and indolence. Last week, the last of their number, Teresa Jungman, died aged 102. Many of the Bright Young Things went on to ‘Great Things’ – William Walton composed, Cecil Beaton photographed and Rex Whistler painted. Teresa Jungman, or ‘Baby’ as she was known, retired to obscurity in Gloucestershire with her sister, where they delivered meals to the needy and occasionally (very occasionally) received visitors from their past – James Lees-Milne and Evelyn Waugh. The latter is...
First it was Ross, then Chiles and now Christine Bleakley. The BBC has called time on the era of top-dollar talent. Instead, it will nurture talent and let commercial broadcasters foot the hefty bill for established reputations. Welcome news – the whole point of the BBC is that it isn’t commercially competitive. Part of the state broadcaster’s remit should be to create careers rather than entrench them. Jonathan Ross is an exceptional provocateur, but no public servant is worth £6million a year. 
According to 
