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Philip Larkin

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The dark side of free love: Mamas and Papas

28.09.09

The incestuous, drug-fuelled relationship between Mamas and Papas star John Phillips and his daughter Mackenzie has cast a different light on the era of peace and love. One London writer who survived the early Seventies remembers how boundaries were blurred and lives ruined... more

Please don’t tell me my hero has feet of clay

25.09.09

I am in mourning for one of my favourite Sixties pop songs, California Dreamin’, by The Mamas and the Papas ... more

Celebs are now invading the world of poetry

03.09.09

Celebrity endorsements are the latest proof of poetry's new-found fashionability... more

Yes, give me bad writers with bad lives

17.08.09

A literary biography without a sex-Nazi, child-slavery, and/or hamster-rape angle is now dead in the water... more

Tennis - it's a fortnight, not a game

29.06.09

SPORTING events turn us all into instant experts. Cometh the World Cup, cometh our intimate knowledge of "catenaccio" and Cameroonian goalkeepers. Then, when the jamboree folds up, so does our dossier of facile judgments.... more

Pixie and Peaches Geldof are both out on the pull

29.06.09

Pixie and Peaches Geldof both snogged members of Indie band The Virgins at the weekend... more

North Korea ‘going postal’ is truly scary

29.05.09

As the North Korea story unfolds, I wonder whether we are watching a nuclear state going postal. This is very scary stuff indeed... more

Forget 'honorary jokes': Carol Ann can show us why poetry matters

01.05.09

With its token Ł5,750-a-year salary and case of wine for your trouble, our Poet Laureateship has long been what the outgoing laureate Andrew Motion has affectionately termed an "honorary joke"... more

Ten years late, this lesbian icon is the right poet for the nation

01.05.09

After considerable dithering and havering, Carol Ann Duffy has agreed to take on the position of Poet Laureate... more

The two poets in Motion's slipstream

29.04.09

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F***! – New film In the Loop restores swearing to an art form

27.03.09

In the Loop, the film extension of The Thick of It, isn't released for three weeks yet but it is already making waves... more

There are no holds barred with poets in a prize fight

06.03.09

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I confess I have 25 secrets to tell you

20.02.09

The new Facebook phenomenon is "25 random things about me". Everyone from John Prescott to Nick Clegg has signed up. Somewhere between the confessional and therapy, it lets you catalogue the minutiae of your life. You then "tag" 25 friends to do the same. ... more

For ****'s sake, the swearing Mayor speaks the language of London

13.02.09

According to a leaked minute, Boris Johnson uttered the most commonly employed fricative expletive no fewer than 10 times during a recent phone conversation with the Home Affairs select committee chairman, Keith Vaz... more

Get a life, you lovers of misery memoirs

21.11.08

Constance Briscoe, the author of the misery memoir Ugly, is being sued for libel by her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, who says it's fiction... more

Nothing is sacred when it comes to being profane

26.08.08

Is nothing sacred? Children's novelist Jacqueline Wilson had her latest bestseller My Sister Jodie removed from Asda shelves after a complaint about the use of the word "twat" in the text... more

'I love Anna Friel... I just won't marry her': David Thewlis' surprise confession

07.08.08

As David Thewlis plays his most haunting role, he makes a surprise confession about his relationship with Pushing Daisies star Anna Friel.... more

The original toga party animals

01.08.08

The behaviour of Nero and his lover Poppaea in The Coronation of Poppaea plumb a level of immorality rarely exceeded in opera before Berg's Lulu.... more

Down and out in Smithfield Market

15.07.08

How apt that London waiter Ross Raisin has been nominated for the £60,000 Dylan Thomas Prize, for authors under the age of 30... more

Hello! is the perfect place for our royals

23.05.08

The Queen has run into flak for appearing in Hello! magazine's photo album of the wedding of Peter Phillips and his Canadian girlfriend. An MP said the public expected her to rise above such tackiness. "She is the Queen, not a footballer's wife." A Palace spokesman has conceded it should never have happened and promised "it will never ever happen again"... more

It’s all too much

14.05.08

Gastropubs have come a long way in a few years. Now one of the swankiest - The Pantechnicon Rooms - has opened in the very heart of Knightsbridge.... more

From ice-cream kid to Oscar glory: English Patient director Anthony Minghella dies of brain haemorrhage at 54

18.03.08

Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella died suddenly yesterday from a 'fatal haemorrhage' after surgery for throat cancer. The 54-year-old, who was best known for his films The English Patient, Truly, Madly, Deeply and Cold Mountain, had told only his family and closest friends about his condition... more

Stand up for Larkin, the true poet of the people

29.02.08

When Philip Larkin died in 1985, he was much the best-loved poet since the war (with the possible exception of Betjeman). That all changed with the publication of Larkin's previously uncollected poems and, in 1992, his Selected Letters. They revealed a lot more about Larkin and earned him excoriation as a racist and misogynist, fascist and porn addict... more

Spinning a yarn - just the job for Campbell

26.02.08

Perhaps we should not be so surprised by the news that Alastair Campbell has become a novelist at the age of 50. After all, as a Downing Street spin doctor, he was renowned for telling tall stories and stretching credulity to the limit. To be published in November, his debut, All in the Mind, is the story of a psychiatrist, his patients and family and "the pressures they bring to bear on each other'' over a long weekend... more