The Tepid Take

I’m hardly the first person to throw the BBC in the bin. I respect their journalism and reject (most of) the hearsay that calls them thralls to the government position. Sure, they occasionally present news in an overtly straightforward way, without considering the systemic cause of the problem (see: late capitalism) but they’re not alone in that. To attack the BBC in principle is to attack an institution that most Britons instinctively respect and value – and thanks to hits like Top Gear and Doctor Who, consumers all over the world lean the same way. Yet, I can’t help but feel that the BBC’s tact on the recent fall into administration of His Master’s Voice , or HMV to his friends, is a tad off the mark. Immediately, as is so tempting nowadays, they err on the side of blaming digital streaming services: much like Netflix foresaw the collapse of Blockbuster, so Spotify, Amazon and Google have brought the downfall of outlets like HMV. Why buy a CD, DVD or any other physical media when y

This piece was originally published in CityMetric in 2018. Imagine, for a moment, that you are wandering through the old town of Amsterdam. As a tourist, you might not be au fait with the smartcard system there, so you buy a “1 hour ticket” to travel across the city. You check in upon entering your first mode of transport, and then you’re free to mix transport modes as much as you like until your hour is up, when you are obliged to check out. This is only one fare of many different types that exist in Amsterdam, but it already differs radically from how things work in London. Here, buses and trams are consistently separate from the Underground and Overground when it comes to how much you pay. The only similarity is that both London and Amsterdam will ask you to pay extra if you want to use a national rail service. To make it plain, the difference is thus: fares align in Amsterdam – everything is included in the same fare, and it’s how long you travel for, not exactly where you tra

The first “game show” ever to air took place in 1938, in the United Kingdom. It was called Spelling Bee, and consisted of a live enactment of said game. However, this ground-breaking first was notably short-lived, and ran for five episodes at most before ceasing production. Despite this commercial failure, the precedent had been set, and game shows soon grew strong in anglophone spheres on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps the most important knock-on effect of game shows' popularity was the launchpad they created for what we now call “panel shows”: game shows with celebrities, now broadly stand-up comedy vehicles where the points scored hardly matter at all. John Lloyd might be seen as the catalyst for this revolution, given his executive role in the creation of – among others – the News Quiz, QI, and Have I Got News for You. The contemporary panel show bears stark resemblance to its modern game show relatives, such as Take Me Out, Big Brother or even Eggheads. The notion of...

This piece was originally published in CityMetric in 2018. Capital cities are, more often than not, a focal point for the stark divide between rich and poor – places where the most economically deprived meet the most economically empowered. In London, these divides can be more than stark: they can be close, even intimate, and there are districts where crossing the street can be like entering a different world. One such street is the Caledonian Road. Known local as “the Cally”, Caledonian Road runs for about a mile and a half, from Kings Cross to the Nags Head junction in Holloway, and was built in 1826 to provide a new arterial route to the north from the West End. At first, developments on the road were sparse; among the first notable buildings were the Royal Caledonian Asylum, which gave the road its name, and H.M. Prison Pentonville. For some time, the northern half of the road was seen as far removed from central London, which stymied development. It wasn’t until the latter half of

When someone says “socialist literature”, you probably think non-fiction, and then you probably think impenetrable and boring. Generalisation as that is, it’s a fair representation of the way material that presents itself as aiming to effect real political change can often cut itself off from its core audience as a result of alienating them by being simply too academic. Or at least, that’s the modern day conundrum, with a Brownite biography weighing in at more than 500 pages and using economic terminology that flummoxed even me, the soon-to-be politics grad, at points. Brown isn’t the only culprit; even the books written by Owen Jones are largely framed for the well-educated middle classes, when their core audience ought to be the working class they aim to actualise. What’s interesting is that this notion of political literature as something academic is actually relatively new. If we think back to Edwardian England, most leftist ideology was spread in small pamphlets and flyers desig

I think it’s generally bad to point the finger. To single out an object, an individual or even a group and call them the unambiguous ‘problem’ tends lead us down a dark path. With this in mind, I have absolutely no problem with Lisa and Adam, the creators of Listography in all its forms. In fact, Lisa’s story on the founding of Listography is very heartfelt indeed. And it’s not the makers I’m interested in, anyway; I want to explore what the growth of Listography (and it has grown, exponentially) tells us about ourselves, our society, the way we behave, and more than anything, what we need. It pays to explain what Listography is. Originally started in 2006 as a website for collating personal lists, it has since expanded to include a multitude of books and even a board game. The nature of Listography is as simple as its portmanteau: using lists to explain something about yourself. Lisa says she would include a daily to-do list, a list of countries to visit, and a list of the best t

In the closing chapter of The Old Patagonian Express, the writer, Paul Theroux, faces a problem: he has spent the entire book outlining his journey across America by the trains he takes along the way, with names like the Balboa Bullet and El Jarocho. However, as Theroux reaches the final stretch, the last few miles to the Tierra del Fuego - a journey intended as the ultimate reflective denouement - he finds this route has no calling card, no title; the motif has been broken by reality itself. Theroux won’t let this stand, so he decides to baptise the train himself, with the help of a boy across the aisle; it gives its name to the book, a symbol of Theroux’s ability to imprint what he has learned over two continents onto the miniscule details of provincial life. The journey changed him.  There is a stereotype, one that carries more than a grain of truth, about gap year students and other sorts who go on follies to faraway lands, always in the pursuit of “finding yourself”. Th

Spain, 1929. In the shadow of an unfortunate war with America - so disastrous they called it “The Disaster” – the country entered the waning years of its second-to-last dictatorship. Facing a dwindling sense of international relevance and the opening scenes of the Great Depression, it was hardly the brightest time for an international expo. And yet, Spain’s hosting of the Ibero-American Exposition was the most successful the country had seen since Barcelona’s turn at the Universal in 1888. The space built in Seville for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition was designed as a synthesis of all things Spanish and the legacy of Spanish communities in the Americas; it was composed in no small part of two central spaces: the Plaza de España, a testament to the history of Spain, and the Parque Maria Luisa, a series of elaborate pergolas and fountains scattered among American flora. The building style of the Plaza de España – which you might recognise from its appearances in Lawrence of Ar

Every April, Seville plays host to Feria, an Andalusian tradition stretching back to 1846. In reality, ferias – a special kind of festival similar to a carnival or town fair – occur all across Spain; it just happens that the grandest belongs to Seville. In 2018, almost half a million people visited the Feria each day over the course of a week. The festival featured exactly 212,000 energy-saving light bulbs and over one thousand separate tents to visit. This goes without even mentioning the giant theme park operating next door. The Feria de Abril is vast, a feat of organisation, complete with a new, extravagant portico every year. It even has its own cocktail; but underneath the surface, all is not well at Feria. The cruel divides of Seville’s society disguise themselves behind tent flaps and guy ropes. A RECIPE FOR REBUJITO ( coctél de feria ) - 1 part manzanilla (local fortified wine) - 2 parts lemonade - Mint leaves to garnish The history

Seville has a reputation in Andalucía. Its citizens, marked out for being more “pijo” (a Spanish idiom denoting poshness or swank) than the rest of the region, are stereotypically depicted in various memes as the wearers of sports scarves, pastel polo shirts and carefully curated mullets. Equally, the city itself centre boasts a wide range of ‘bougey’ boutiques and luxurious restaurants. However, as is the case in many European cities, the suburbs of Seville are radically poorer than the town centre; in addition, they are marked by their racial diversity, while the high street is almost entirely white. However, there is one particular suburb of Seville that stands out, notorious today as much as it was upon its foundation in the 60s. This suburb is a housing estate known as Las Tres Mil Viviendas - The Three Thousand Homes. I first encountered Las Tres Mil in a class I was taking at the university in medieval history. The professor was talking about the destitution that some M

On the 29th of March, 1969, Madrid played host to the 14th annual Eurovision Song Contest. At the time, Spain was undergoing a regime crisis, as the future of Francoist dictatorship lay in doubt. While it would be another 17 years before Spain joined the European Economic Community, marking the tail end of the country’s democratisation, the economy was slowly internationalising. Culture quickly followed suit; Spain shared victory at Eurovision that year with, among others, the United Kingdom. Only a week earlier, however, a tiny shard on the edge of Iberia had played host to a completely different musical outfit: John Lennon and Yoko Ono, marrying on the Rock of Gibraltar. They weren’t the first, and they certainly wouldn’t be the last: the spot now plays host to many a British couple looking to enter into the union of matrimony, while enjoying a average daily sunshine hours unseen anywhere else in the United Kingdom. As an Overseas Territory, a self-governing but otherwise integ

The Monastery of Poblet, nestled high in the hills of the province of Tarragona, Catalonia, has played a vital role in the history of the ancient Crown of Aragon. As the Crown’s pantheon, each king was buried high in those hills, ever since its foundation in the marriage of the County of Barcelona and Kingdom of Aragon. However, the long line of successive kings buried there was put to an end by Ferdinand II: He broke the oath promised centuries before to instead be buried with his queen, Isabella, La Católica, in Granada. Ferdinand was the first king of what Spaniards call the Monarquía Hispánica: a great pan-Atlantic empire and precursor to the modern Spanish state. However, Ferdinand was for the most part secondary to his wife, Isabel, given that she controlled the then far more powerful and populous Crown of Castile. The role of Ferdinand’s homeland, the Crown of Aragon, and its most powerful province, Catalonia, was from then on firmly tied to the whims of the Castilians, und

One of my favourite phrases of all time – a phrase that constantly re-invites its own relevance - isn’t even a quote: it’s the name of a piece of art. El sueño de la razón produce monstruos , or, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, is the name of an etching by Spanish Enlightenment artist Francisco Goya (granted, most people have heard of this bloke). What I love about the name is that, while its intended interpretation is entirely valuable - that when we cease to keep a watchful eye on our society, citizens corrupt themselves and breed ignorance - translating sueño as ‘dream’ instead of ‘sleep’ can lend an entirely new interpretation. While the “dream of reason” was not the intentional concept Goya aimed to describe, it is an excellent metaphor to describe how the Enlightenment ideas espoused by Goya and his peers in Spain & across the world could eventually be used to derail human flourishing instead of working in its favour; that the glorification of reason would l

This piece was also published in CityMetric in 2018. Perched on a mesa in the middle of a wide Andalusian plateau, Ronda is a sleepy Spanish town much like any other. Its inhabitants number a meagre 35,000. The nearest city, Malaga, is 100km to the south. The town is unassuming from a distance.  And yet, as a place, Ronda has been home to more than its fair share of famous figures; since the 19th century, an air of romanticism has led artists from Irving to Rilke to Welles to Hemingway to visit Ronda, and write no shortage of poems and prose dedicated to the city. This was no doubt a testament to the town’s stalwart atmosphere; it is cited as the first home of bullfighting and maintains an almost village-like contiguity even in spite of its size. But if any one monument defines Ronda’s ubiquity in the Romanticism of old, that monument would be the Puente Nuevo, the New Bridge, which spans the Guadalevín river cutting the town in two. The third of a series of increasingly el