La joie de livres!

My eye was caught by the excited smirks of these little ladies carting their new piles of reading matter through the streets of wartime Paris while I was browsing the bookshop of London’s Southbank Centre.   And they’re a familiar bunch, this lot: little miss middle is sporting a grin uncannily like the one slapped [...]

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Keeping it in the Family

Props to anyone who can keep tabs on Devendra Banhart, never mind secure the wayward folkster in their viewfinder for long enough to snatch anything more discernible than a blurred wash of sequins, face paint and hair. But that’s exactly what photographer Lauren Dukoff has done repeatedly over years of hanging out with Banhart, and the [...]

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Discovery of the Week: Here Gallery and Bookshop

It’s the cherry on top of one of Bristol’s most spirited spots – where jolly, jeering street drinkers rock beneath crumbling walls sporting Banksy originals; afternoon gig-goers spill out onto pavements from cafes-cum-gig venues to puff on their rollies; the spitting hiss of vats and vats of boiling oil sizzles from rows of red-topped takeaways [...]

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In the Loops

Right now, the news of the birth of the literary love child of Faber & Faber and Domino Records has made me happier than if that stalk were to drop a swimming pool onto the toasting tarmac outside my flat. Yes, two of the UK’s most exciting independent creative names have got it together, and [...]

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