Richard Gwyn

First We Read, Then We Write

This incontrovertible statement is the title of a book I have just read about the work and ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson – why is no one called Waldo anymore? – and a very fine book is it… Read More

Médecins Sans Frontières in Libya

I receive an email from Médecins Sans Frontières saying that the Libyan National Army Security Service in Misrata are sending them people to treat who have been tortured, simply to patch them up into a state where they… Read More

How American TV portrays the British

Blanco was a big fan of The Wire, David Simon’s epic account of life among the drug dealers of West Baltimore, with its startling portrayal of a city going under the cosh as the forces of unrestrained capitalism… Read More

Big John Toshack

Imagine my surprise last Thursday when, standing sardine-packed on the bus that was to take me and my fellow Easy Jetters to our plane at Barcelona airport, I realised that the man into whose coat my nose was… Read More

LSD and literature

  “While it’s true that later on I read quite a lot and my literary knowledge was strengthened, it’s also true that LSD, by opening up my visual field, was not at the time by any means an… Read More

At Swim-Two-Birds and an absence of frantic sorrow

  My favourite novel when I was nineteen years of age and had just moved to London was At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien and it was with some pleasure that I dipped into an article by Colm Tóibín in… Read More

Seasonal Affective Disorder

  Having gone out at the beginning of Christmas week and bought a box of a dozen (yes, 12) Krispy Kreme doughnuts and eaten seven (7) of them myself, I feel some changes are overdue. Blanco actually has… Read More