by tim_bell | Aug 6, 2020 | Latest News
In conversation recently with a couple of folk, there was some dispute about the difference between “national” and “nationalist”. I maintain there’s no real difference, the “differences” are fictions worked up nationalists trying to make out they’re not territorial,...
by tim_bell | Jul 22, 2020 | Latest News
Good to see some active collaboration between two satirists and commentators who cut their creative teeth in the 1990s, Irvine Welsh and Bret Easton Ellis. As I say in my book, there’s little doubt that BEE’s American Psycho was an influence on IW when he...
by tim_bell | Jul 11, 2020 | Latest News
Following Michael Holding’s powerful speech about taught racism before the first England v. West Indies test Match, I’m reminded of a little-known song in South Pacific (Rodgers and Hammerstein, 1949). With incipient racism running through the whole show,...
by tim_bell | Jul 8, 2020 | Latest News
On the opening day of the Test match series England v. West Indies, let me make this contribution to Black Lives Matter and to Israel/Palestine. Two personal memories, thirty years apart. In 1978 I was in Senegal, the most westerly country in Africa. I came across...
by tim_bell | Jul 8, 2020 | Latest News
Oh dear. Lara Feigel is trying to assemble 10 novels that explore character and friendship. Included are Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, book of the year Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams, various other classics – and Trainspotting. Oh dear. The claim...
by tim_bell | Jul 6, 2020 | Uncategorized
This is a reminder – or possibly your first notice – that we would like your entry (or entries) for the Leith Anthology by the end of July. Whether you’ve nearly finished it, with just the final tweaks to get right, or you’ve been putting ideas to steep in your fine...
by tim_bell | Jun 21, 2020 | Latest News
Midsummer day. The solstice. We should mark it more than we do. It’s not just another day. A few years ago on this day I was visiting the coal ships in Leith, and got friendly with a Philippine crew. At 10 o’clock in the evening I was extolling with them...
by tim_bell | Jun 18, 2020 | Latest News
Give Welsh’s Trainspotting a bit of respect for having a broad view of Leith in the 1980s. Spud Murphy, explicitly of Catholic Irish descent, and his mixed-race uncle Dode, are going into the Persevere pub near the foot of Easter Road where the Orange Order and...
by tim_bell | Jun 15, 2020 | Latest News
Exactly three years ago, as MC of the Leith Community Tattoo, I called for the customary minute’s silence following the Last Post to include respect and a call to action for the dead, bereaved and affected by the fire at Grenfell Tower. Later I wrote in my book:...
by tim_bell | Jun 13, 2020 | Latest News
Picture the scene, all as it really happened. On a cold January evening this year, coming out of the City Chambers on Edinburgh High Street I was startled to hear a very loud voice and vivid lights. Turning round, I saw that they had just started the poem with...
