Author James Lever has written an spoof autobiography of the star of the Tarzan movies but the real life story is stranger Listen to James Lever, the raffish English author of Me Cheeta, expound on the “natural Barthesian tools” of OK! magazine readers, or “the loss of quiddity” in the star system, or the “Flaubertian[…]
In the early hours of April 9, 2008, a 44-year-old Englishman and a 48-year-old Frenchman sat silently on the edge of the windowless 155th floor of the Burj tower – the tallest building in the world – watching dawn bleed over Dubai. From their eyrie half a mile up, they saw the desert turn from[…]
Mupagasi is Helen’s neighbour. He is also the man who butchered her husband and son during the Rwandan genocide. How have they learnt to live together? Helen Mukandori has no choice but to remember every damned thing. She remembers how, in the early hours of April 7, 1994 – the morning after the plane carrying[…]
Fifteen years on, have they any regrets about joining the cult that declared war on America? Livingstone Fagan, a squat 49-year-old with ash-tipped dreadlocks, answers the door. He is dressed in a grey sweatshirt, dark trousers, white socks and plastic sandals: penitentiary chic. In his spotless one-bedroom flat, high in a social-housing block on the[…]
“Fame is not a cultural achievement. It’s just a sign of our times. If your movie doesn’t make an enormous amount of money, is it a failure? I have different criteria on what constitutes a success.” A defiant Kevin Costner defends his Hollywood legacy. “Are you anxious to die?” It’s a little after 3pm on[…]
This young man was both victim and villain when he was stabbed to death in London’s West End in May. We mourned Steven Bigby for one whole evening. For those few hours, his death at the hands of another young black man outside a McDonald’s on Oxford Street on a bright May day seemed shocking.[…]
What’s the story behind Britain’s richest road? There’s a simple way to check if your house is a super-mansion or not: look for the boiler cupboard. If you find one, you fail. Of course, there are other tests. Do you have your own cinema, for instance, or could you hold a five-a-side football tournament in[…]
What is a cricket club doing in a 9/11 novel? As its acclaimed author – and Staten Island cricketer – Joseph O’Neill tells, it’s obvious Joseph O’Neill, a lean, dark, Irish-born author raised in Holland, educated at Cambridge, trained at the English bar and resident in New York, was, until recently, unaware of his genius.[…]
Twenty-one young people who have killed themselves in the past 18 months who lived in or were connected with Bridgend in south Wales — and all chose death by hanging. The police now believe they were not part of a suicide cult — so why did they do it? All at once, Chris Claypole, a[…]
What happens when William and Harry hit the town? One man spent a month trawling the nightclub world of the Turbo-Sloanes to find out Please don’t call it a scene. Norman Mailer and Mikhail Baryshnikov ordering drinks while Jerry Hall and Debbie Harry hit the dance floor at Studio 54 – that’s a scene. Francis[…]