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Diary

Audrey Gillan: The drubbing of Mohammad Sarwar, 22 January 1998

... degree at one of Glasgow’s universities. Now she was helping to make flat roti bread on black pans sitting on the top of two circles of burning coals. When they arrived at Multan airport, the Haq women were allegedly beaten and forced into a van by their father, their half-brother, Zulfiqar Ali, and some hired help. They spent the next few days in a ...

I ain’t afeared

Marina Warner: In Her Classroom, 9 September 2021

Black Teacher 
by Beryl Gilroy.
Faber, 268 pp., £12.99, July, 978 0 571 36773 3
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... the author of To Sir, with Love (1959), a catalyst for her own later self-reckoning in Black Teacher. When she began to look for a teaching post, Gilroy was frustrated at every turn, the target of a widespread suspicion founded in an ignorance that could be described as folkloric were the baiting about cannibalism and washing not so vicious. In her ...

Don’t lock up the wife

E.S. Turner: Georgina Weldon, 5 October 2000

A Monkey among Crocodiles: The Life, Loves and Lawsuits of Mrs Georgina Weldon 
by Brian Thompson.
HarperCollins, 304 pp., £19.99, June 2000, 0 00 257189 7
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... order to save the Prince of Wales from scandal. But it was a bad day for Georgina when a sinister black landau pulled into Tavistock Square with a medical snatch squad. It would not be correct to say that ‘with one bound Georgina was free’ but escape she did. Thereafter she lent vigorous support to the campaign to reform the lunacy laws. Her triumph was ...

What she wasn’t

Joanna Biggs: ‘The Vanishing Half’, 13 August 2020

The Vanishing Half 
by Brit Bennett.
Dialogue, 343 pp., £14.99, June, 978 0 349 70146 2
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... twin girls who saw their own father lynched. ‘I wanted to write a book that was not just about Black pain,’ Bennett continued, ‘but also about Black love.’ Her novel, which has been at the top of the New York Times bestseller list since it came out, six weeks ago as I write, isn’t straightforwardly escapist, but ...

White Lies

James Campbell: Nella Larsen, 5 October 2006

In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Colour Line 
by George Hutchinson.
Harvard, 611 pp., £25.95, June 2006, 0 674 02180 0
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... both the US and Britain: your part-Scottish, part-Native American, part-Spanish friend is often ‘black’ if there is a hint of Africa in his or her make-up. John Bellew, the husband of Clare Kendry in Nella Larsen’s exquisite novel Passing (1929), responds violently when he finds out that Clare, who has cheeks of ‘ivory’ and hair the colour of ‘pale ...

Diary

Elaine Showalter: Even Lolita must have read Nancy Drew, 7 September 1995

... exercise,’ a plantation owner assures the visiting Bobbsey Twins, as they watch the merry black servants at work. Mason sees the Shirley-Templeish Honey Bunch series as promoting an especially pernicious model for feminine behaviour. ‘Honey Bunches’ are little girls from four to eight, nymphets ‘with a built-in chastity belt’, programmed for ...

Je suis bizarre

Sarah LeFanu: Gwen John, 6 September 2001

Gwen John: A Life 
by Sue Roe.
Chatto, 364 pp., £25, June 2001, 0 7011 6695 9
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... in the formal costume of the period: a tight-waisted blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a big black bow at the neck. Her hair is tied back and her hands are on her hips. She is slightly turned away from us, so only one hand is visible. Gwen John always emphasised the hands of her sitters. Hers is strong and competent, its paleness echoing the paleness of ...

Fumbling for the Towel

Christopher Prendergast: Maigret’s elevation to the Panthéon, 7 July 2005

Romans: Tome I 
by Georges Simenon.
Gallimard, 1493 pp., €60, May 2004, 2 07 011674 3
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Romans: Tome II 
by Georges Simenon.
Gallimard, 1736 pp., €60, May 2004, 2 07 011675 1
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... pausing on a bridge to light his pipe and look over his shoulder, the whole scene held in grainy black and white. Here a world of crime and mystery was about to unfold, but in a special inflection of the thriller genre that kept thrills to a minimum. Then along came Bond and Bondery, the fast-moving, sex-drenched and gadget-packed fantasy of the new Cold ...

Inconvenient Truths

Hugh Miles: Who put the bomb on Pan Am 103?, 21 June 2007

... of Lockerbie victims now believe that the former Libyan intelligence officer is innocent. Robert Black QC, an emeritus professor of Scottish law at Edinburgh University, was one of the architects of the original trial in Holland. He has closely followed developments since the disaster happened and in 2000 devised the non-jury trial system for the al-Megrahi ...

Into the Underworld

Iain Sinclair: The Hackney Underworld, 22 January 2015

... Hackney was friendship, fond memories of an earlier collaboration with the artists, Tim Noble and Sue Webster. That collaboration involved a private compound that was also a conceptual artwork in which the raven-haired couple could hang out and manufacture their signature products: the Dirty House in Shoreditch. Redchurch Street, a thin line between the ...

Diary

Alan Bennett: What I did in 2014, 8 January 2015

... a building for which there was no longer a social purpose. Most of the children reading here are black or Asian, with Somali children in the majority. As a so-called economist Littlewood presumably thinks the place would be better used as a Pizza Hut.26 March. Wake this morning thinking affectionately of the spring in the grounds of Jervaulx Abbey which ...

Figureheads

Clare Bucknell, 19 November 2020

... nations, figureheads had a synecdochic function. They ‘embodied the spirit of the ship’, as Sue Prichard and Jeremy Mitchell write in their guide to the National Maritime Museum’s collection, representing by their design some quality or attribute for which their vessels were to be known.* The Egyptians carved figures of birds symbolising keen vision ...

Very like St Paul

Ian Sansom: Johnny Cash, 9 March 2006

The Man Called Cash: The Life, Love and Faith of an American Legend 
by Steve Turner.
Bloomsbury, 363 pp., £8.99, February 2006, 0 7475 8079 0
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Walk the Line 
directed by James Mangold.
November 2005
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... reached an out-of-court settlement with Cash in the late 1960s. ‘Ring of Fire’, ‘Boy Named Sue’ and ‘The Ballad of Ira Hayes’ were all written by others; likewise, cover versions of Cash’s songs are often an improvement on the originals; see, for example, Waylon Jennings’s unsurpassable up-tempo ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ (from Heartaches by ...

Barbie Gets a Life

Lorna Scott Fox, 20 July 1995

Barbie’s Queer Accessories 
by Erica Rand.
Duke, 213 pp., £43.50, July 1995, 0 8223 1604 8
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The Art of Barbie: Artists Celebrate the World’s Favourite Doll 
edited by Craig Yoe.
Workman, 149 pp., £14.99, October 1994, 1 56305 751 4
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... her as blank as possible, the better to serve the vagaries of girlish fantasy; though Lilli’s black eyes were changed to blue, since as Rand points out, the unrestricted fantasy touted by Mattel did not include fantasising about being foreign. In the mid-Sixties, the strategy changed under pestering from children and the urge to sell more products. Barbie ...

Under the Arrow Storm

Tom Shippey: The Battle of Crécy, 8 September 2022

Crécy: Battle of Five Kings 
by Michael Livingston.
Osprey, 303 pp., £20, June, 978 1 4728 4705 8
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... overriding their fleeing Genoese allies; Edward III refusing to reinforce his son, the Black Prince, saying ‘Let him win his spurs’; the gallant death of the old, blind king of Bohemia; the Black Prince’s respectful and chivalrous adoption of the old king’s badge and Ich dien motto. Most of ...

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