Heroin
From street urchin to superstar: the unlikely career of Al Pacino
Ellen Barkin, Al Pacino’s lover-cum-prime- suspect in his comeback movie Sea of Love (1989), once dismissed the artifice of the…
In Chet Baker's albums you can hear America’s romantic self-image curdling
The thing to remember about Chet Baker, an old acquaintance says of the errant jazz musician in Deep In A…
Big names and broken souls: storm clouds gather over Woodstock’s summer of love
In 1963, when the bloom was still on the rose, Bob Dylan described Woodstock as a place where ‘we stop…
I know what the Piers Gaveston Society really did with pig’s heads
Memories of partying with the notorious Piers Gaveston Society at Oxford
The war on drugs is stupid and counter-productive
Rosalio Reta was 13 years old when recruited by a Mexican drug cartel. He was given a loyalty test —…
The recruitment company to go to if you've got no arms or legs
When to launch? For impresarios, this is the eternal dilemma. Autumn is so crowded with press nights that producers are…
The criteria for admittance to a Maldivian cemetery
Moofushi, Maldives We clambered aboard a dhoni, the sturdy wooden boat that the Maldivians use for getting about the…
Help me become an addict
When the White Queen told Alice she had sometimes believed as many as six contradictory things before breakfast, she spoke…
Narcotically-induced mischief in an urban wasteland
Fifteen minutes by rail from Paddington, Southall is a ‘Little India’ in the borough of Ealing. An ornate Hindu temple…
If Philip Seymour Hoffman wasn’t happy, what hope is there for us?
Celebrity deaths have no decorum. From Elvis on his toilet to Whitney face down in her bathtub, their last moments…
