Michael Duggan
Second reading
“The top of the bookmark juts out from the pages of my copy of The Woodlanders like a tombstone marking the mortal remains of any hope I ever held of finishing the thing.”
Belly of the beast
The Booker-winning Marlon James takes on the fantasy genre with a novel sent in a phantasmagorical version of Africa
Border bard
“Patrick Kavanagh wrote about an Ireland that “froze for want of Europe”. He was thinking of an Ireland that history had removed from the mainstream of European culture”
Why Remoaners should back Boris
“Boris, ironically, now offers Remoaners the best chance of a soft Brexit, or at least a sensible one. And to those who want a second referendum—’the people’s vote’—there may even be a chance of that too.”
On the road
“In the summer of 1980, in the grip of some Kerouac-ish fantasy, I opted to hitch-hike from Laredo to New York”
Discovering the Great War of China
A third of a million Chinese labourers helped the Allies defeat the Kaiser, but their huge unsung contribution ended in betrayal