Thursday, 7 August 2025

Declining vocabulary in children's books

 I've written a piece for The Spectator about the declining quality of vocabulary in children's books. There wasn't space, unfortunately, to talk about the excellent writers who do stretch children these days, like Frances Hardinge, Marcus Sedgwick, Sally Gardner, F E Higgins et alia. 


Saturday, 2 August 2025

The real story behind Barry Lyndon

Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon is a film I enjoy greatly: I also greatly enjoyed writing about it, and the real story behind it, for The Specator