Watching BBC’s Informer last night a snatch of music unearthed deeply buried memories. The song was ‘We’re From Bradford’ by The Negatives – a band who were together for less than a year, never performed outside Yorkshire and who released one …
After the longest hot stretch in recent memory, I had expected a pulsating throng at Tooting Bec Lido. Instead, it was a surprisingly select gathering of refugees from the sweltering Smoke who assembled at the venerable south London oasis on …
Chill factor: Tooting Bec’s million gallon antidote to overheating Read more »
There are two empty jeroboams in my friend Neil’s wine cellar the labels of both of which are covered in signatures and bon mots from the diners who enjoyed their contents. My name is on both. We drank the wine …
A memory of Billy Graham on the occasion of his demise in his 100th year. A version of this piece originally appeared in Nearly Reach The Sky by Brian Williams (Biteback Publishing 2015) My one visit to Upton Park left …
June 1976 What I enjoyed about ‘Peanuts’ is hard now to say. Charles Shultz’ strip cartoon appeared in The Observer’s colour magazine, which my parents bought on Sundays, and each week, I devoured the four-panel tale. Snoopy’s fantasy’s life as …
Roast Peanuts, how Charlie Brown introduced me to girls Read more »
With nearly eighty bicycles on display, in the Design Museum’s Cycle Revolution exhibition, enormous variety is the initial impression. Even among those created with a single purpose in mind – going very fast around a track for a short space …
Article first appeared in Amateur Photographer 8 April 2017 WITH A COUPLE OF HOURS between meetings one afternoon last summer, I walked the perimeter of BMW’s Oxford plant. My hope was to take a photograph that somehow conveyed the idea …
This article first appeared in Amateur Photographer in December 2017 WHEN MY BROTHER DIED unexpectedly at the age of 40, my family was distraught. Like others struck by grief, we flapped around searching for ways to celebrate a life cut …
In Hollywood blockbusters (and countries run by despots) attacks on the free press see journalists dragged to prison, presses smashed and tv stations forcibly shut. In Britain’s liberal democracy, undermining our ability to investigate, and to express freely what we …
A tribute to Pete Burns, and many others Late ‘70s Leeds was monochrome, hacked apart by urban motorways, choked with disused factories and fringed with bleak system-built housing. It was a metropolis of lost purpose – at least in my …