Ian Thomson

Drummers at a graveside wear white, based on Ethiopian orthodox funeral traditions

Death wears bling: the glory of London’s Caribbean funerals

29 November 2014 9:00 am

Death is big business in parts of the Caribbean. In the Jamaican capital of Kingston, funeral homes with their plastic…

The woman who invented the Italian resistance

8 November 2014 9:00 am

Italo Calvino, the Italian arch-fabulist, wrote a foreword to this celebrated wartime diary when it appeared in Italy in 1956.…

Wave goodbye to the weight-gaining, drunk-driving Inspector Wallander

11 October 2014 9:00 am

Some years ago I met the Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell at the Savoy Hotel in London, where he was…

A member of the London Home Guard demonstrates the use of old wallpaper as camouflage (1942)

The real Dad’s Army was no joke

30 August 2014 9:00 am

Dad’s Army, the sitcom to end all sitcoms, portrayed the Home Guard as often doddery veterans. In one episode, Private…

Ten years and an earthquake: the changing face of Haiti

16 August 2014 9:00 am

This summer, I returned to Haiti for the first time in ten years. I was itching to see how the…

Why I’m now scared of book clubs

12 July 2014 9:00 am

Writing frankly about Jamaica has made me nervous of invitations from strangers. How would this one turn out?

Slaves planting cane cuttings in Antigua, 1823, by William Clark

Only tourists think of the Caribbean as a ‘paradise’

28 June 2014 9:00 am

A couple of years ago in Jamaica, I met Errol Flynn’s former wife, the screen actress Patrice Wymore. Reportedly a…

The punk who inspired a generation of British woman to pick up a guitar

21 June 2014 9:00 am

Viv Albertine is deservedly famous as the guitarist of the tumultuous, all-female English punk band The Slits. Their debut album,…

Narcotically-induced mischief in an urban wasteland

7 June 2014 9:00 am

Fifteen minutes by rail from Paddington, Southall is a ‘Little India’ in the borough of Ealing. An ornate Hindu temple…

Exclamation marks, no; aertex shirts, yes!

10 May 2014 9:00 am

Jonathan Meades, the architectural, food and cultural commentator, appears on television in a pair of retro shades and a trademark…

Jorge Luis Borges and his ‘bitch’

3 May 2014 9:00 am

Ian Thomson on a miserable mismatch that became the talk of Buenos Aires in the Sixties

Gay Paree: food, feuds and phalluses – I mean, fallacies

15 March 2014 9:00 am

In his preface to The Joy of Gay Sex (revised and expanded third edition), Edmund White praises the ‘kinkier’ aspects…

Was Flann O'Brien at his best when writing about drink? (Answers on a damp stressed envelope, please)

1 February 2014 9:00 am

On his deathbed in Dublin in the spring of 1966, Flann O’Brien must have been squiffy from tots of Paddy.…

'She's the most important Jewish writer since Kafka!'

11 January 2014 9:00 am

Ian Thomson on the turbulent life of Clarice Lispector

The many attempts to assassinate Trotsky

4 January 2014 9:00 am

Leon Trotsky’s grandson, Esteban Volkov, is a retired chemist in his early eighties. I met him not long ago in…

Carlos Acosta, the great dancer, should be a full-time novelist

2 November 2013 9:00 am

Carlos Acosta, the greatest dancer of his generation, grew up in Havana as the youngest of 11 black children. Money…

Italo Calvino's essays, Collection of Sand, is a brainy delight

26 October 2013 9:00 am

The Japanese are sometimes said to suffer from ‘outsider person shock’ (gaijin shokku) when travelling abroad. Recently in London we…

Stephen King isn't as scary as he used to be, but 'Doctor Sleep' is still a cracker

5 October 2013 9:00 am

Though alcohol withdrawal is potentially fatal, booze has none of the media-confected glitz of heroin (imagine Will Self boasting of…

Mr Loverman, by Bernardine Evaristo - review

14 September 2013 9:00 am

In 1998, the Jamaican singer Bounty Killer released a single, ‘Can’t Believe Mi Eyes’, which expressed incredulity that men should…

An Armenian Sketchbook, by Vasily Grossman - review

17 August 2013 9:00 am

Vasily Grossman, a Ukranian-born Jew, was a war correspondent for the Soviet army newspaper Red Star. His dispatches from the…

A Trip to Echo Spring, by Olivia Laing - review

10 August 2013 9:00 am

The boozer’s life is one of low self-esteem and squalid self-denial. It was memorably evoked by Charles Jackson in his…

Nicolas Roeg interview: ‘I hate the term “sex scene”’

13 July 2013 9:00 am

At 85, the film director Nicolas Roeg is pleased to see the critics catching up with him