Will Self's Blog, page 13
September 30, 2016
September 7, 2016
Just a Minute
Listen to Will Self on his debut on Just a Minute on Radio 4 with Ross Noble, Sheila Hancock and Paul Merton here.
September 1, 2016
August 19, 2016
The inquiry into historical child sexual abuse allegations has become a national farce
A French friend, in town for a couple of days recently, was suitably and stereotypically bemused by our latest bad news about terrible crimes: Justice Lowell Goddard’s resignation as the head of the inquiry into historical child abuse was closely preceded by new results from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, according to which 11 per cent of the women questioned, and 3 per cent of the men, said they had been sexually assaulted during childhood.
“What is it with you British!” he exclaime...
A Point of View: Finding Our Roots
Will Self’s latest run of Radio 4 Point of Views looks at genealogy, on Friday 19 August at 8.50pm here. You can also listen to What’s Wrong With Modern Art? and Act your Age on the iPlayer.
August 10, 2016
The spectacle of Boris Johnson in France
At the corner of the rue D’Hauteville and the rue de Paradis in the tenth arrondissement of Paris is a retro-video-games-themed bar, Le Fantôme, which is frequented by some not-so-jeunes gens – the kind of thirtysomethings nostalgic for an era when you had to go to an actual place if you wanted to enter virtual space. They sit placidly behind the plate-glass windows zapping Pac-Men and Space Invaders, while outside another – and rather more lethal – sort of phantom stalks the sunlit streets.
...July 16, 2016
The Happy Reader
Read Will Self’s piece, On Big Ben, in issue 7 of The Happy Reader, published by Penguin, 3, here.
July 8, 2016
We remain gripped by a free-floating fantasy that settles on anything – such as the Chilcot report – that seems to offer redress
We all know the form: a Terrible Political Thing happens – and like many terrible political things that happen, it appears to have been caused by a combination of sheer contingency and human error. An inquiry is established to find out how far appearance conforms to reality (a philosophic question that has bedevilled thinkers for millennia, but let’s not dwell on that) and witnesses are interrogated to see if they either conspired or cocked up. In due course a Report is written comprising mil...
July 7, 2016
Newsnight Chilcot report discussion
Watch Will Self on Newsnight discussing the Chilcot inquiry report from the 52-minute mark, here.
July 1, 2016
On location: Soap Street, Manchester
Soap Street in Manchester is filthy. A thick, decades-old deposit of soot and grime coats the old warehouse buildings, while underfoot there’s rotten fruit, discarded takeaway cups, broken glass: all the casual droppings of the urban herd. At its westerly end, the street – which is really little more than an alley – dog-legs right, and in the crook of this bricky elbow, beside bulging wheelie-bins, This & That resides. A local institution for rising thirty years, it offers a selection of thre...
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