California
‘Sitting the 11-plus was the most momentous event of my life’ – Geoff Dyer
‘Everything else that has happened couldn’t have happened were it not for that’, says Dyer, in a funny, moving account of growing up in postwar England
The road trip from hell: Elegy, Southwest, by Madeleine Watts, reviewed
Watts skilfully conjures a sense of impending doom as a young couple’s expedition to the American Southwest is threatened by deadly fires sweeping through California
Her weird name was the least of Moon Unit Zappa’s problems
Frank and Gail Zappa’s eldest child describes how the endless battles between her manipulative mother and misogynist father in the 1970s blight the family to this day
Dedicated to debauchery: the life of Thom Gunn
Even the most liberal-minded reader might be surprised by the amount of crack cocaine, LSD, alcohol and casual sex the poet indulged over the course of 50 years
A long goodbye to Berlin
Christopher Isherwood’s experiences as a young man in Weimar Germany would be reworked in his autofiction for the rest of his life
The tyranny of 1970s self-help gurus
Clients pursuing ’true self’ were expected to wear identical clothes, shave their heads, self-flagellate and be ‘given hell’, while paying through the nose for it
California dreaming
Adam Sweeting talks to Graham Nash about Joni Mitchell, the Hollies and the birth of Crosby, Stills and Nash in the Laurel Canyon idyll of the 1960s
Strong opinionsloosely held
In his 2005 book What The Dormouse Said John Markoff traced the roots of the personal computer industry to the…
A very San Franciscan president
The most under-appreciated fact of the 2020 presidential campaign is that Kamala Harris, the woman likely to soon replace the…
In defense of the Electoral College
Though often lost in the debate over the Electoral College, Article II in our Constitution created a system in which…
Nancy Pelosi’s bad hair day
Does Nancy Pelosi’s unfortunate trip to a hair salon have any news value? Or is it much a hairdo about…
California burning
Oakland The air in Northern California was thick and yellow in November 2018. The hills were wrapped not in salty…
Kamala Obama?
Kamala Harris is no radical. Indeed, no matter how vaguely inclusive the label ‘progressive’ may be, Harris’s long record as…
The dear departed
I can think of few novels as bleak or dispiriting as Yiyun Li’s 2009 debut, The Vagrants. Set in a…
San Francisco in decay
District Attorney Chesa Boudin personifies everything that’s wrong with San Francisco: weak on drugs, weak on crime, weak on racist…
In Los Angeles, school’s out…forever?
Americans have mixed feelings about opening schools this fall. Some — like the Trump administration’s Department of Education — want…
California spreads the wealth…to illegal immigrants
California is mastering government of the people, by the people, for…illegal aliens? Starting this week, illegal immigrants living in California…
Elon Musk slays California’s anti-business beast
After a lengthy battle with public health officials in Alameda County, California, Elon Musk has emerged victorious. Tesla — the…
Consider the costs
Less than 24 hours after California governor Gavin Newsom closed ‘non-essential’ businesses and ordered Californians to stay inside to avoid…
Why Trump will win again in 2020
This article is in The Spectator’s January 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. My reasons for thinking Trump was going to be…
The Bears v. the Rabbits: The Feral Detective, by Jonathan Lethem, reviewed
Jonathan Lethem’s new book is billed as ‘his first detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn’, which won America’s national book critics…
LA used to be fun – dope has just made it dull
Los Angeles stinks. Not just of the usual things: sex, money, suntan oil, hipster food, surfer wax — odours that…
Alice’s restaurant
Though Alice Waters is not a household name here, that is precisely what she is in America — the best-known…
Downtown Los Angeles
There’s a certain kind of Englishman who falls hard for Los Angeles. Men such as Graham Nash, who swapped the…
Grandma: a feminist comedy that punches magnificently above its weight
Apologies if you were expecting a review of Star Wars here, but Disney is not allowing critics access prior to…
