Reviews
a review of ‘popcorn’
this was published april 11 2010
Rock musicians are at their most absurd and entertaining when demanding to be taken seriously, when they feel it's no longer enough to be loved for their ability to pen a catchy melody but instead want to be appreciated for their talents on screen. …
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balti britain
from The Observer 21st September
IN Balti Britain , Ziauddin Sardar has set himself a daunting challenge: to capture what he describes as the ‘vibrancy and mind-boggling diversity of the British Asian experience’. There are arguably few writers better qualified to meet this challenge than Sardar, a distinguished author, broadcaster …
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the disunited states of America
this is a book review published in the Observer on 20th July 2008
Having lost the popular vote but won the White House, George W Bush used his 2000 inauguration speech to declare his ambition to ‘work towards a single nation of justice and opportunity.’ If the incoming President aspired …
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Freedom by numbers
(a book review of Nikita Lalwani’s ‘Gifted’)
Education exerts a powerful hold on the immigrant imagination. For first-generation immigrants, whose own dreams and aspirations were often thwarted by the cold reality of racism, it represented the means by which their children would be able to deflect discrimination and do their …
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A different class
OASIS and Coldplay released their latest albums within seven days of each other; they end the year with a tour that finds them performing within seven days of each other.
Monday night in Aberdeen and 8,000 fans wait impatiently for Oasis. Some are survivors from the Nineties but the veterans …
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Blind faith in Bruce Almighty
You never forget your first time. It was 25 June 1988, Wembley Stadium: my first Bruce Springsteen concert. I was just another 17-year-old student living in a dismal town. At college I was an enthusiastic and sociable student, but once the last class of the day was over my life …
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Escape Strategy
Time to Emigrate George Walden Gibson Square, 240pp, £8.99
Dear George Walden,
You may be surprised to find me writing to you from the pages of the New Statesman. But given that Time to Emigrate is written as a letter to your son, it seemed appropriate for me to present …
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The Boss unplugged: Bruce Springsteen
There are two Bruce Springsteens. There is Bruce the messianic rock icon, the Telecaster-wielding guitar god and E Street Band front man whose natural habitat is a football stadium of 60,000 disciples punching their fists in unison to ‘Born to Run’. And there is the Bruce Springsteen who began his …
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A different class: It’s the Nineties versus the Noughties
Both of Britain’s biggest stadium acts take to the road. But will Coldplay be as happy as Oasis to tread the path of crowd-pleasing familiarity?
- OASIS: Exhibition & Conference Centre, Aberdeen
- COLDPLAY: Earls Court, LondonSW5
OASIS and Coldplay released their latest albums within seven days of each other; …
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on Amis
Dangerous things, thought experiments. It was, after all, during a thought experiment that Martin Amis’ unreined mind ventured into territory that led to accusations that the author was guilty of racism. ‘There is a definite urge- don’t you have it?- to say that the Muslim community will have to suffer …
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