Nor is there a blue plaque on the home in Ebury Street shared by Nobel Laureate Patrick White and artist Roy de Maistre. High art is poorly served. Meanwhile, Hattie Jacques is worthy of two blue plaques, in Folkestone and Margate.
I was once involved in lobbying for a blue plaque outside JG Farrell's former home in Kensington. English Heritage turned it down on the grounds that he wasn't widely known. So much for winning the Booker Prize and still being in print nearly 50 years after your death.
Limited edition of Nonesuch by Francis Spufford.
Francis Spufford's signature.
Bookmark from Brown Onion Books, Ashbourne, Derbyshire.
The long wait for a bookshop in Ashbourne is over. I visited the new Brown Onion Books this morning, and walked home with this beauty.
Sting's Song from the Labyrinth, released on Deutsche Grammophon.
More than once.
Humphrey Burton and his wife Christina Hansegård shopping in Itaewon, Seoul. 1985.
Humphrey Burton and his wife Christina Hansegård shopping in Itaewon, Seoul. 1985.
I took Humphrey Burton and his wife Christina shopping for counterfeit Polo shirts in Seoul in 1985.
Bunny chow curry, created in the 1940s by the Indian community of Durban, South Africa. The curry is served in a hollowed out loaf of bread.
Bunny chow in Durban got there first.
"There's a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets."
Vlogger in front of the plinth from which Ashbourne's Royal Shrovetide mass football will start at 2pm today and tomorrow.
Painting of Royal Shrovetide on the window of a cafe in Ashbourne.
Dig Street, Ashbourne. 9am, 17th February 2026.
Millennium Square, Ashbourne.
The vloggers are out, the flags and bunting are up, the shops are being boarded up. The biggest two days of the year in Ashbourne have arrived. Royal Shrovetide mass football starts at 2pm.
Display an album that was important to you when you were nineteen.
I played James Wood, the critic, in a tournament at our school. I must have been 10, he'd have been 12. Other boys started crowding around, watching. I had no idea why. Turned out I was within a couple of moves of beating him. The only person who didn't realise was me. I lost.
Graham Greene's cameo as an insurance agent in François Truffaut's La Nuit américaine (Day for Night).
Grim Grin makes his appearance. Truffaut apparently didn't realise who he was until after the scene had been shot.
They believe they have an obligation to all licence-fee payers, including racist, Defund the BBC, licence-fee boycotters. They don't believe they have an obligation to the licence-fee payers who - like me - no longer watch Question Time because of the endless litany of objectionable guests.
JG Ballard and his golden retriever at the gate of their home.
Surprised he didn't go for a Deutsche Grammophon cover. Replicate the disappointment for yellow-spine CDs that all too many of us have experienced in charity shops when spying a Penguin black spine, only to find it's this:
I trust these meet your criteria, introducing the first part of my novel about Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton, on location in Dahomey making The Comedians. Burton's namesake explorer provided the perfect epigraph. Graham Greene, who wrote The Comedians, also provided an apposite quote.
File under Breaking News. The third pudu, Pudella carlae, was discovered in 2024. www.sci.news/biology/pude...
My reading year: 223 books read, two of my own published.
irnewtonwrites.wordpress.com/2025/12/31/2...
Kalyan Minaret, Bukhara, USSR. 1986. Photo by Richard Newton
Kalyan Minaret, Bukhara, USSR. 1986. Photo by Richard Newton.
Intourist brochure from 1986 advertising the 'Treasures of Central Asia' tour.
The same minaret in 1986, when, as a teenager on my first solo holiday, I did an Intourist package tour of Soviet Central Asia.
Cover of Chris Difford's 2008 album The Last Temptation of Chris, in which he replicates a famous photograph of Tony Hancock.
If anything, Chris Difford's homage makes the original all the more haunting. You can replicate the pose, but not Hancock's eyes.
'The Untold Story'- which has been the subject of several books. What *is* an untold story with cinematic potential is the fact that his daughter, Kelly, was a primatologist studying gorillas in Rwanda with Dian Fossey, and Jimmy visited her there. Would love to see gorillas reacting to that voice.
@irnewton.bsky.social discussing his new book with John Wroblewski. Global Games is available in paperback or eBook from Amazon www.youtube.com/watch?v=g78n...
He made difficult subjects accessible, which was a gift. As I reader, I always presumed some of the details were made up - not least to protect patient confidentiality. If he'd falsified scientific data - I don't think it's alleged that he did - that'd be more difficult to defend.
My hero, too. My first season at Roker Park was 1976-77. The 1973 squad were being phased out, and kids like me got our own generation of players - minus long hair and moustaches. Gary Rowell was foremost among them. His two goals in the 6:0 victory over West Ham are highlights of my childhood.
Environmentalist and author Edward Abbey playing the flute in the American wilderness.
The ultimate male role model.
The Monkey Wrench Gang?
Boris Becker about to abort his serve at the 1990 Wimbledon semi-final versus Goran Ivanisevic. (Photo by Richard Newton)
Cover of Global Games: Columns from Global Traveler by Richard Newton.
The photo that earned me the ire of Boris Becker and the entire Centre Court crowd, including Princess Diana. Full story - and many more - in my book, Global Games.
