I’m doing a show in Edinburgh for the first time in a long while. It’s fun, although I feel I’m basically wearing a scent called Elder Statesman (I’m hoping it smells more of ancient leather and authority than incontinence). I get stopped in the street a lot, including by some people who have not mistaken
On page 532 of my preview copy of this biography of Philip Roth there is a footnote. In it, Blake Bailey quotes from Roth’s novel Deception, where the character of Philip Roth asks his mistress what she would do if she was approached after his death by a biographer. Would she talk to him? She
‘Cancelled’ is quite a buzzword of our times, isn’t it? Up until about ten days ago, it referred mainly to cancel culture, that ability of Twitter mobs to rule on whether or not a celebrity misdemeanour means the end of celebrity for that celebrity. But recently someone tweeted me the words: ‘Nature: “I’ll show you
