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Reportage

Yates Lane, NW8

Zadie Smith uses Google Maps, then doesn't
'Escapees from St Mary’s, Paddington: expectant father smoking; old lady wheeling herself in a wheelchair, smoking; die-hard holding urine sack, blood sack, smoking.'

A Very Practical Joke

Sheila Heti visits the Miami Art Fair
'I watched as she stuffed three oil paintings packed in bubble wrap into her large duffel bag, along with twenty t-shirts. We were only going for three days.'

Annie Hall

At a Woody Allen retrospective, David Rakoff encounters an old friend
'I can’t help feeling like he’s dismantled the very admirable legacy of his earlier work by his later, overly prolific efforts. It’s a more benign version of Ralph Nader.'

Out of Windows

How should we react when people fall? By Sunita Soliar
'Last Halloween, a woman was thrown out of a fourth-floor window in Marylebone. I was heading back to my flat on Chiltern Street with the intention of watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a film that I had always avoided.'

Diamonds in the Dark

Rachel Lichtenstein on the hidden lives of Hatton Garden
'It is a secret, private, hidden world that operates under a strict set of unspoken internal laws: never screw a partner and once a deal is done it is a 'mazen brucha' and it must be adhered to.'

Syria Calling

Robin Yassin-Kassab re-experiences the complexities of an ancient land
A document from another time: Robin Yassin-Kassab's diary of his 2008 return journey to Syria, and a Damascus hazed by diesel fumes but still standing.

On Handwriting

Writing can be a series of marks, says Aislinn Hunter, impressions that locate a site of having been
'Only his handwriting seemed to locate him exactly, to ground his body in the act of writing and thinking and breathing; each stroke of the pen a black ink tether that tied me to him and him to me.'

That Life of Sexual and Sybaritic Abandon

Alexander Larman heeds the words of Lord Rochester and exits London
'Inspired by his loathing of the hypocrites and knaves who surrounded him, Rochester aimed to show his friends (and enemies) that he was a serious and considered thinker.'

The Freedom Writer

Seventy-nine authors stepped forward. Liberty needed one more
To mark their 80th anniversary, the advocacy group Liberty delved into their sizeable list of contacts and got hold of 79 of the world’s best writers, then aske... Read more

Untitled

by Peter Jackson
I think I can say, with perfect confidence, that Liberty, the organisation, is rubbish. I can, I can say that. I can also say that the Prime Minister is rubbish... Read more

The Pain Machine

How does one parent a mood ring? By Heidi Julavits
I ignored her pain. This was not difficult to do; her pain was rarely justified. To wear special seamless socks was to stick her feet in an iron smelter. To wear a soft acrylic scarf was to be garroted by a scroll of razor wire.

‘You endured life. You didn’t live it.’

Georges Simenon’s message to his mother
When I left for Paris at the age of nineteen, you were still a stranger to me. Come to think of it, I never called you Mama; I called you Mother, just as I never called my father Papa. How did that come about?