Desmond Morris was the first celebrity I ever interviewed, in 1990. Interview gold. One of the many quotes underlined in my notebook: "We are cerebrally nouveau riche. We acquired our remarkable brain very quickly. To give a species like us a big brain is like giving a ten-year-old a Ferrari."
Is in banging on about the Lake District again?
Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man.
Anthony Quayle in the same film (one of two Hitchcock stars I've met).
Googie Withers in The Lady Vanishes (the other I've met).
Shame the same is said for singular. Pam Bondus.
The story of his stint as a vacuum cleaner salesman can't be repeated enough. "He knocked on the door of a mobile home and none other than Aldous Huxley answered. Beefheart pointed at a vacuum cleaner and shouted, "I assure you sir, this thing sucks." He made his sale."
Holds true, though. We're all looking for life's advantages.
The benefits of being a travel writer. You can be poor *and* stay in places like that. www.globaltravelerusa.com/amansara-rev...
Dining room at Amasara Hotel, Siem Reap. Once King Sihanouk's private screening room.
(The screening room in his former palace in Siem Reap is now the dining room of the very exclusive Amansara hotel.)
Bottle labelled 'wood louse infusion', on the shelf in Raeapteek, the 15th Century pharmacy in Tallinn's Town Hall Square.
I didn't buy this.
View of Tallinn's Town Hall Square viewed through a bottle on the window sill of Raeapteek, the old pharmacy in operation since the 15th Century. Photo by Richard Newton.
My photo from inside looking out, 2011.
Such a pleasure to select 12 short stories (with an emphasis on southern Africa) for A Personal Anthology. apersonalanthology.substack.com/p/a-personal...
"My literary awakening was forged in wonder and fear in the Botswana Book Centre in Gaborone. The aisles were narrow, and any visit came with the risk of getting blocked in by an unnerving woman ranting to herself. There I had my first encounters, in person and in print, with Bessie Head."
Such a pleasure to select 12 short stories (with an emphasis on southern Africa) for A Personal Anthology. apersonalanthology.substack.com/p/a-personal...
Nor is there a blue plaque on the home in Ebury Street shared by Nobel Laureate Patrick White and artist Roy de Maistre. High art is poorly served. Meanwhile, Hattie Jacques is worthy of two blue plaques, in Folkestone and Margate.
I was once involved in lobbying for a blue plaque outside JG Farrell's former home in Kensington. English Heritage turned it down on the grounds that he wasn't widely known. So much for winning the Booker Prize and still being in print nearly 50 years after your death.
Limited edition of Nonesuch by Francis Spufford.
Francis Spufford's signature.
Bookmark from Brown Onion Books, Ashbourne, Derbyshire.
The long wait for a bookshop in Ashbourne is over. I visited the new Brown Onion Books this morning, and walked home with this beauty.
Sting's Song from the Labyrinth, released on Deutsche Grammophon.
More than once.
Humphrey Burton and his wife Christina Hansegård shopping in Itaewon, Seoul. 1985.
Humphrey Burton and his wife Christina Hansegård shopping in Itaewon, Seoul. 1985.
I took Humphrey Burton and his wife Christina shopping for counterfeit Polo shirts in Seoul in 1985.
Bunny chow curry, created in the 1940s by the Indian community of Durban, South Africa. The curry is served in a hollowed out loaf of bread.
Bunny chow in Durban got there first.
"There's a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets."
Vlogger in front of the plinth from which Ashbourne's Royal Shrovetide mass football will start at 2pm today and tomorrow.
Painting of Royal Shrovetide on the window of a cafe in Ashbourne.
Dig Street, Ashbourne. 9am, 17th February 2026.
Millennium Square, Ashbourne.
The vloggers are out, the flags and bunting are up, the shops are being boarded up. The biggest two days of the year in Ashbourne have arrived. Royal Shrovetide mass football starts at 2pm.
Display an album that was important to you when you were nineteen.
And then he lived in a hotel. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYvb...
I played James Wood, the critic, in a tournament at our school. I must have been 10, he'd have been 12. Other boys started crowding around, watching. I had no idea why. Turned out I was within a couple of moves of beating him. The only person who didn't realise was me. I lost.
Graham Greene's cameo as an insurance agent in François Truffaut's La Nuit américaine (Day for Night).
Grim Grin makes his appearance. Truffaut apparently didn't realise who he was until after the scene had been shot.
They believe they have an obligation to all licence-fee payers, including racist, Defund the BBC, licence-fee boycotters. They don't believe they have an obligation to the licence-fee payers who - like me - no longer watch Question Time because of the endless litany of objectionable guests.
JG Ballard and his golden retriever at the gate of their home.
Surprised he didn't go for a Deutsche Grammophon cover. Replicate the disappointment for yellow-spine CDs that all too many of us have experienced in charity shops when spying a Penguin black spine, only to find it's this:
I trust these meet your criteria, introducing the first part of my novel about Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton, on location in Dahomey making The Comedians. Burton's namesake explorer provided the perfect epigraph. Graham Greene, who wrote The Comedians, also provided an apposite quote.
