While Coetzee’s novel is primarily a story of personal disgrace – our protagonist is cast out of his university’s ivory tower thanks to his inappropriate fondness for students – the country’s political transformation is not a simple backdrop. I happened to finish Disgrace just as the Guardian reported on the plight of a Continue reading
In the quiet old days before blogs filled cyberspace and clogged Google – before Google and even before Alta Vista – people used to resort to pen and paper and write a letter to their local rag. This first step towards interactivity was not as popular as all this blogging malarkey might make Continue reading
Michela Wrong uses her New Statesman column to argue for more corpses on TV as exposure to the realities of war – like the 800 civilians killed by the US in Fallujah over last couple of weeks – can only turn us into peaceniks. News bosses seem desperate to save us from the Continue reading
Monster’s not the gore-fest some make it out to be – unless the words ‘based on a true story’ set your teeth on edge. It’s okay as a non-judgemental biopic of a serial killer whose decline – nasty die, then naughty, then good – seems too steady. Theron’s Oscar winning ugly is no Continue reading
I’ve saved this from my last visit to Purgatory; did I ever tell you the village is in dying? I was in my early teens when we relocated. I thought I’d died and gone to… well Purgatory. Moving from Islington, London to a place with one bus an hour to nowhere interesting was… Continue reading
