Articles

  • 1 week ago | scotsman.com | Stuart Kelly

    In Charlotte Runcie’s new novel, set during the Edinburgh Fringe, an actress takes inventive revenge on a theatre critic who sleeps with her after panning her show. Review by Stuart KellyIf Graham Greene is correct and an author requires a splinter of ice in their heart, then a critic needs a glacier; along with a brass neck, an iron constitution, steel nerves, and possibly an acid tongue.

  • 2 weeks ago | scotsman.com | Stuart Kelly

    This is a terribly accomplished novel, and I am unsure if that is a compliment or a criticism. It has an affecting core scenario, some extremely engaging writing, some very interesting observations; and yet I found it, at some gut level, manufactured, or as if it had palpable designs on eliciting a particular response. Moss has written eight other novels, and is much admired by novelists whose opinion I respect, and yet this felt somehow fabricated.

  • 3 weeks ago | scotsman.com | Stuart Kelly

    When I had finished reading this tremendous biography, I was so exhilarated and intrigued that I started to look for archive footage of Gertrude Stein. Although I found some, far more gobsmacking was a clip from a 1978 Swedish film (in ten languages) with none other than Bernard Cribbins as Gertude Stein and Wilfrid Brambell (Steptoe Snr.) as her life-partner, gatekeeper and muse, Alice B Toklas. It is absurd, unsettling, wry and provocative, much like the real Stein.

  • 1 month ago | scotsman.com | Stuart Kelly

    If you’re ever lucky enough to be in a church meeting, there is a fun game you can play: betting with yourself on how long it will be before someone says “young people”. Bemoaning their lack is mandatory and never, ever say “why don’t we not do whatever we did to their parents’ generation, or their parents’ parents’ generation, because whatever it was we did do, it quite evidently didn’t work”. I say that as, at fifty-two, I am often the youngest in the congregation.

  • 1 month ago | scotsman.com | Stuart Kelly

    The provocative title of Robert Macfarlane’s new book brought to mind a favourite couplet by the ingenious, wry Scottish poet Frank Kuppner: “God is real, but not as we use the word ‘real’. / Or, for that matter, as we use the word ‘God’.” The semantic hair-splitting evaporates if we invoke the German philosopher Hans Vaihinger’s concept of “Als Ob” or “as if”.Macfarlane is less concerned with the metaphysics of rivers than with the ethics.

Contact details

Socials & Sites

Try JournoFinder For Free

Search and contact over 1M+ journalist profiles, browse 100M+ articles, and unlock powerful PR tools.

Start Your 7-Day Free Trial →