The Creative Identity

Listen Up Philip

I think that very few things are worse than London in the summer and that one of them is a wretched cold in London in the summer. Now, I am not sure whether the past week should righteously qualify as 'summer' here, for the days oscillated between 12C (Monday, I put the heating on) and 26C (Friday, I put the air con on), suffice to say that I tried, and failed, to 'dress for the weather' because... what was the weather doing anyway? I've experienced low-level cloud and the look of October many times in this fair city, only to realise that, actually, it's 72% humidity out there and 22C at 8:45am. Leave the scarf at home. Today has been overcast and cold and so I've spent the day in bed, reading, watching and writing. I've read the rather wonderful Shopgirl by Steve Martin (you may recall the movie in which he also stars opposite Claire Danes, but the book is rather superior, as is often the case) and I've found the much-anticipated and just-come-out Listen Up Philip online (legally, I hasten to add, it's on YouTube). As you can imagine I was enormously intrigued by the premise of this movie, for at its core sits a writer, Philip Lewis, who wrestles with the demands of art and commercialism, as well as focus, inspiration, and drive. Around him, a number of supporting characters take occasional centre stage: his girlfriend Ahsley, his mentor and equally obnoxious writer Ike, and his college... Read more →

On The Additional Merits of Books

Three weeks ago today I was pacing around my old home, observing a bunch of very willing and very hunky removal boys pack my things at record speed. By the time I swished out for lunch, 80% of my possessions had already disappeared into cardboard boxes. When I returned, only the bathroom paraphernalia and my bed were still in place. Today, I am writing to you from my new study, a 2.5m x 2.5m box overlooking the gardens, oak trees and rooftops of the mews just behind my house. You really would not know this is super central London. I work with a girl, a fantastic change manager, who displays unequalled finesse in her understanding of human emotions. In our first Skype call after I pitched up here, she told me that it's quite normal to feel hard-done by and unable to bond with the new place, for each change that affects us needs to progress through a period of normalisation in order for its establishment to be successful. In other words, new must become normal before we ourselves feel normal again. The day after I moved I wrote in my diary, 'I don't like the new house. It smells and I cannot find anything. I cried too'. The day after that I wrote, 'Went to Harrods and feel like myself again. That place can make anything better'. Six days after that I wrote, 'It's great to live here'. By the time the first weekend was out, I had just... Read more →

Letters Live 2015

On Thursday, I kicked off the Easter week-end with one of the Letters Live performances of 2015. The day before, an electrical fire raged underneath Kingsway, virtually next door to the Freemasons' Hall, and that evening's performance was cancelled. Too bad for the Wednesday ticket-holders and too good for us; the line-up was carried over for a show that clocked up at 3 hours and 45 minutes (with a 15-minute interval) and included Ben Kingsley, Clarke Peters, Danny Huston, Ian McKellen, Sophie Hunter, Ferdinand Kingsley, Simon Callow, Louise Brealey, Andrew Scott, Greta Scacchi, Dominic West, Joss Ackland, Andrew O'Hagan, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alan Rusbridger plus the musical performances of Kelvin Jones and Natalie Calvin. I've always loved reading letters, both the ones I receive and even the ones I re-read before I send them, and in fact, I have an illustrious past (ahem, allow me) as a letter-writer that started when I was eight, and I wrote to Barbie Magazine enquiring after pen friends (these were the 1980s and no, I am not joking, just ask my mum). They published my letter with my address and I received tons and tons of replies and cost my parents a fortune in stamps because, even though many of these pen-friends dropped away as time passed, a few did not. One of them has stuck around all this time, and even though we now only catch up at Christmas and for our birthdays, this year we celebrate thirty years of correspondence without ever having... Read more →

Book Play

Today I went to Tate Britain for the first time since 1997. How this came to pass, I truly do not know. There are museums and galleries here in London in which I always find myself, week in, week out (The National Gallery being possibly the most blatant example), and others upon which I touch and go once in a blue moon. Tate Britain, as it is known these days, for then it was merely The Tate Gallery, houses the Turner collection in the Clore Gallery and it is always worth visiting if only to plunge oneself into British Romanticism at its very best (some of William Blake's works are also here, visit the upper floor). But I am not snuggled here in bed to tell you about the obvious, I am here to write a bit about books that are playful, or books you can play with. The bookshop at Tate Britain, like the one at The National Gallery or at The Saatchi Gallery, has an excellent selection of books for children. Today, very many caught my eye, from wonderful picture books, to books for doodling, colouring, sticking, cutting, piecing, you name it. They also stock the sublime Paper Play, which was one of my Christmas presents. You can fold, tear, stick, colour, glue, and even construct things with the pages of Paper Play. I find it therapeutic even to leaf through it, as I did on Christmas morning, imagining what to do with it, whether by following the... Read more →

The London Scene

A couple of months ago or so, I noticed an extremely enticing little hardback in the window of one of the Daunt Books, could have been the one in Marylebone. Said little book was The London Scene by Virginia Woolf. I was a little surprised because I did not know such a book existed but upon closer inspection I came to know that she did not, as such, write it as a collection, but rather she produced a number of essays that were published bi-monthly by Good Housekeeping in the 1930s and were later collected as The London Scene. I snorted when I realised this. I've never bought a Good Housekeeping, so I have no beef whatever with the publication, but I snorted because in the present day essays on London, or spending, or the city are penned by the likes of Caitlin Moran and India Knight while a century or so ago they had Virginia Woolf... if this ain't proof that our contemporary cultural landscape is being dragged through hedges backwards and then stomped on by wild dogs I don't know what is dear reader. Two of these six essays are my favourite for diametrically opposite reasons: 'Oxford Street Tide' and 'Great Men's Houses'. The place I most detest in London is Oxford Street. One of the ones I love most viscerally is Hampstead, specifically the stretch from the south of the Heath up to the hill upon which the heart of the old village itself is located. It... Read more →