The mystery of Area X: Absolution, by Jeff VanderMeer, reviewed
We are never told the exact location of this highly toxic zone in Florida, but any scientist investigating it has been monstrously affected, either physically or mentally
The hubris of the great airship designers
Rushing to build the world’s largest flying machine was perhaps Britain’s greatest imperial folly, with a disregard for safety measures dooming the R101 to disaster
Here in Texas, Hell has frozen over
Austin ‘If I owned Texas and Hell,’ General Phil Sheridan famously said, ‘I would rent out Texas and live in…
We’re spending lockdown defending a family of mice
Austin My first Independence Day in the US for many years. Usually I’d be in Paris avoiding Texas heat. My…
Michael Moorcock: I feel I’ve been cheated by the British state
Back to Texas to prepare for guests arriving for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Once again we left our Paris home not…
Deep in the forest’s mysteries: The Cloven, by Brian Catling, reviewed
Brian Catling’s great trilogy takes its title from The Vorrh, his first volume. This final book fulfills all the promises…
Texas: the myriad contradictions of the Lone Star state
The subtitle of Lawrence Wright’s splendid God Save Texas (‘A Journey into the Future of America’) would be alarming if…
Michael Moorcock: Why banning opioids has been a disaster for me
Returning to the United States a short while ago I received a stern talking to from an immigration officer. Why…
Cotton Belt Notebook
Clarksdale, Mississippi, where Highway 61 crosses 49 and Robert Johnson met the Devil, who taught him the secret of the…
Nicholas Hawksmoor: a genius in his own right
In the conclusion to his very substantial study of England’s least known and most misunderstood Baroque architect, Owen Hopkins discusses…
Iain Sinclair and me — Michael Moorcock meets his semi-mythical version
In the late 1980s Peter Ackroyd invited me to meet Iain Sinclair, whose first novel, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, I…
Americans and their gun culture: attached at the hip
Like the documentary journalist Iain Overton, author of this book, I was taught to shoot and maintain a gun as…
The King Kong of the thriller: the phenomenal output of Edgar Wallace, once the world’s most popular author
At the time of his death in 1932 Edgar Wallace had published some 200 books, 25 plays, 45 collections of…
