Here are some samples of my journalism. I write most often about the arts, books, culture, feminism, politics, relationships, travel and technology. Most things, really. I am, of course, always keen to discuss new commissions and projects.
‘Shape-shifter Antony Gormley captures the vitality of dance’ | The Australian, 31 December 2011
An interview with the artist in his London studio.
‘All About Almodovar’| The Australian, 24 December 2011
“Watching The Skin I Live In hours before meeting Almodovar prompts a mild cognitive dissonance. The film is a violent, graphic, harrowing psychodrama: an unstinting look at revenge, rape and murder. It’s the sort of movie even the most stony-hearted viewer will struggle not to watch through splayed fingers. And in almost jarring contrast, the man who created it is utterly affable. Dressed casually in a colourful, striped velour pullover, his eyes twinkle beneath his fluffy shock of grey hair in an avuncular fashion as he welcomes visitors into his office — spacious but by no means grand — settles behind his desk and offers a broad, wide smile in anticipation of the first question. Why does a man this charming make a film that’s so harrowing?”
Memes: Take a look at miaow | Independent, 19 September 2011
Kate Miltner is a fan of lolcats – pictures of cats with daft captions. A big fan. A super fan, even. “I dressed up as a lolcat for Hallowe’en in 2008,” she explains. “I was Happy Cat and my boyfriend at the time was a Cheezburger [after the website home of lolcats – I Can Has Cheezburger], and we attached huge-impact font letters to ourselves – I can send you a picture if you want.”
London’s calling but Wales is still home to author Joe Dunthorne | The Australian, 10 September 2011
“Someone asked me the other day: ‘Are you trying to place Wales on the literary map?’ ” Dunthorne says, in an accent that still flags his roots, though he has been living in England for most of the past decade.
“I don’t see it that way.” Instead, he says, it’s a case of being able to write best about a landscape that he feels he really understands: “Having that ownership over somewhere just makes it that much easier to write about.”
Tony Parsons, that airport job was mine | Comment is Free, 6 August 2011
Unlike Parsons, I am not a best-selling author of middlebrow sensitive lad lit. But I am a leader in another field that makes me eminently qualified for the post: if there were a society for people who are afraid of flying, I would be the president. And I would also be the vice president.
Monaco and the wedding trap | Comment is Free, 5 July 2011
The gowns were pressed, the flowers were readied and the classic American band was all set to rock. But happy weddings do also require willing brides.
The discomfort zone | The Australian, 23 July 2011
ACCURACY is of tremendous importance to Lloyd Newson. Sitting down for an early morning interview, the director-choreographer doesn’t just agree to the standard request for the conversation to be recorded on a digital voice recorder by a journalist; he has come prepared to make his own copy.
Hell hath no fury like an author scorned | Comment is Free, 30 March 2011
I will forever be able to quote verbatim the words of the critic who concluded a damning review with the remark that I write like I am “rushing to finish an undergraduate essay”. The urge to seize my laptop and send a stinging riposte “…and I think you should know that I rushed to finish all of my undergraduate essays and I have a very good degree!” was intense.
‘Letting Go’ | The Australian, 26 February 2011
An interview with Kazuo Ishiguro, on the debut of the film of his book, Never Let Me Go.
‘Friends with benefits’|i, 10 February 2011
Two new comedies about friends who have sex-sans-romance tell us that it’s not just all right to hang out with opposite-sex pals: it’s also normal to shag them, without expecting that the afterglow will involve any greater display of emotion than a high-five.
To flirt with success is hard enough without involving social media. It’s a game without any real rules: one thing to read a book purporting to explain how it works; quite another to “touch the inside of his forearm!” or “be mean to her, she’ll totally fancy you!” and not feel preposterous. At its core, the greatest flirting art is the ability to detect when the object of your affection will be receptive to your sweet nothings – and knowing when to stop when it’s clear that they think you’re quite creepy. The line between these two states is awfully fine.
‘Do Women Like Sex As Much As Men Do?’| My Daily UK, 2 November 2010
Yes.
‘MFK Fisher and the Dangers of Overcooking Books’| Guardian Books Blog, 12 October 2010
I first came to MFK Fisher as an eater, not a writer – assured by my most food-savvy friend that Fisher was the all-time doyenne of culinary lit. But beyond the arch recipes in the second edition of Fisher’s treatise on eating through austerity, How To Cook A Wolf, lies an insight into the way writers relate to their own work which makes it an essential volume for anyone who writes, regardless of their interest in a recipe for sludge (take all the vegetable and meat scraps you have; boil; add “whole-grain cereal”; serve to someone you dislike).
‘Baking: The Sweetest Stress Cure I Know’| Locally Sourced (Food Network UK), 1 October 2010
I still always try to have a bag of flour and a chunk of butter on hand at all times: you never know when you need a bit of a stress bake. The quiet process of following a recipe, combining ingredients, and waiting patiently for the batter to transform into a solid foodstuff is soothing, warm, and sweet. Is it possible to maintain a strop about anything while cake-making? I think not.
‘A Simple Flying Phobia’| The Morning News, 26 May 2010
“It’s OK,” my parents say. They do not understand, but my parents are very nice people. “There are lots of people who don’t fly at all, and you can be one of them. For example, John Madden. You can be like John Madden.”
‘My great-aunt’s cookery secret’| Locally Sourced, 14 May 2010
At mealtimes, we are like so many other extended families: we sit down around the table, on mismatched chairs (including the folding ones that live in the basement), and we tediously discuss our eating preferences. Someone is trying to lose weight. Someone is eating gluten-free. Someone has become a vegetarian and someone who was a vegetarian the last time we were all together now is on the Caveman Diet. Someone is allergic to shellfish and someone else is allergic to peanuts and did someone remember to get the soy milk for someone else who is lactose intolerant? No? Someone is going to have to run to the grocery store.
‘Orange Prize “grimness” is not the fauly of woman novelists’| Guardian Books Blog, 18 March 2010
Most women are resigned to being the occasional recipients of unbidden exhortations from strangers to smile when they’re looking less than ecstatic. But it seems unlikely that women writers would have expected to receive the literary equivalent of a “cheer up, love, it might never happen!” from one of their own.
‘Mauritius is an Island in the Middle of the Indian Ocean (fiction)| 3:AM Magazine, 20 February 2010
I am waiting for someone to speak to me. This is my fourth in a series of evenings of waiting, sitting at a dining table that is in the middle of a dining room that is on a platform in the middle of a swimming pool that is in the middle of a six star resort that is in the middle of the southeast coast of Mauritius. Mauritius is an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
‘Anything for a fast festive buck’, Observer| 20 December 2009
Books sold as Christmas novelties are, for the most part, the Ferrero Rocher of literature: volumes conceived by their authors and publishers to be stacked high and priced low by the cash register at Waterstone’s, to be snatched up by shoppers who have reached that phase of Yuletide buying that’s driven by a feeling of obligation towards the recipient (your brother-in-law, say) rather than affection. These are presents for people who you do not especially like.
‘Martin Amis’ problem is not Katie Price, but women’| Guardian Books Blog, 20 October 2009
It may be diverting for Amis to imagine that legions of his would-be readers have been distracted from his work by Katie Price’s cleavage: perhaps he thinks at the sight of her latest pony book, people on the verge of purchasing The Rachel Papers or London Fields think, “ooh! Breasts!” and toss his work aside.
‘Lost in Translation’| Sunday Times Style, 17 May 2009
…The last man I dated had versed himself so well in the details of my life before we even met that it was nearly impossible for us to have a conversation. “One time I went on holiday…” I’d begin. “To Africa? Yes, I know,” he’d say. “My brother and I don’t look very much alike,” I’d say. “Yes, he looks like Pete Sampras,” he’d reply. We are no longer seeing each other.
‘Teenage Fathers Still Get Off Scot-Free’| Guardian Comment Is Free, 6 March 2009
Unless there’s been a magical outbreak of immaculate conceptions, the current debate on teen pregnancy makes it apparent that a lot of people are missing out on a key fact of life. Not a lot has changed since the days when unwed mothers were locked away in institutions or otherwise cast out of society in abject disgrace: while a wide range of pundits bang on about the need to stop young girls from getting pregnant, they’re overwhelmingly ignoring a central part of the problem – the fathers.
‘I Killed Britney Spears’| Bad Idea Magazine, May 2008
I fell in love with Britney Spears on a cold winter’s day in the December of my 18th year. I was shopping for accessories in a tatty store for teenagers; she was dancing through the halls of a high school in a sexy uniform on a large flat-screen television suspended above a rack of Christmas earrings with flashing red-and-green lights.
‘Love Me, Love My Favourite Book’| Guardian Books Blog, 26 November 2007
Taking White Noise along on the first date is, I have come to realise, much too keen. On the other hand, however, if I leave it too late and the man in question declares that he can’t be bothered to read past the first three chapters of the book (or indicates a reluctance to draft a short essay discussing the key metaphors), then I will have no choice but to utter that clichéd phrase: “It’s not you. It’s Don DeLillo.”
‘British Men: Why I Love Them (Even Though They’re Crap)’| Arena, October 2007
I love their pink going-out shirts and polyester man-bags; their awkward displays of affection and their herds of friends from school to whom they refer exclusively by offensive, decade-old nicknames. And – oh! – their extraordinary obsession with breasts. The way they sit next to me on public transport, gazing earnestly at Page 3 as if they have a genuine interest in what Tracee, 19, from Essex, has to say about climate change, a message that she is apparently in such haste to convey that she forgot to put a top on.
‘Childhood depression: “I wanted to die”’| Independent, 21 August 2007
It is the autumn of 1995: I am 14 years old. Each morning I am meant to get out of bed at 5.45 to catch the school bus, which leaves 50 minutes later. But this hasn’t happened in weeks. Instead, I have a new routine. My alarm goes off like a piercing scream; I unplug it and smash my face into my pillow. I am dizzy with fear and can only move in a slow and laboured manner, as if the air in my room has been thickened with gelatin.
