Book Review: Ian Burama’s Tokyo Romance
As a young man in his twenties, Ian Buruma chose to make 1970s Tokyo his home. In his new memoir, Buruma, a well-known author and now editor of the New York Review of Books, chronicles in lurid detail his times as a lowly photographer capturing the avant-garde theatre scene, and describes the artists who tolerated his presence.
Book Review: Richard Lloyd Parry’s Ghosts of the Tsunami
Tohoku is a region to which most Tokyoites would never venture. Seen as a “rustic” and old-world place, the accent is hard to understand for those not originally from north-east Japan. Richard Lloyd Parry, the Asia Editor of the Times, spent six years reporting from Tohoku in the wake of the 2011 tsunami. His new book offers a well-researched, polyphonic narrative of what happened on the day 133-ft waves swept in—and how the story continued long after the news cameras left.
Theatre Review: Coming Clean at Trafalgar Studios
A PLAY’S success can be judged by assessing the snack you brought in, once the actors take their final bow. If the forgotten packet of melted milk chocolate buttons is anything to go by, Coming Clean had me engrossed. It’s a touching script from 1982 by Kevin Elyot (My Night with Reg) but feels relevant and fresh almost 40 years later.
Theatre Review: The Rage of Narcissus at the Pleasance Theatre
IN an unusual strike for a playwright, Sergio Blanco makes himself – or his absence – the main character of The Rage of Narcissus at the Pleasance Theatre. The unique 90-minute one-hander sees the actor Sam Crane transform into Blanco at the personal request of the boundary-breaking Uruguayan-French writer himself – or does it?
Book Review: Mark Spencer’s Murder Most Florid
DEATH is not something to find disgusting or scary, says a forensic botanist hired by the police to crack cases by analysing plant samples. Dr Mark Spencer said: “Death itself is not horrid. It’s not evil or bad, it’s part of the amazing natural world. It’s challenging, wonderful and intimate to be working with someone’s remains.”
Book Review: Caitlin Davies’s Bad Girls
ON a July morning in 1960, the “queen of the underworld” escaped from Holloway prison. Born into poverty in 1928, Zoe Tyldesley – later Zoe Progl – started stealing at the age of six and would find herself working at a nightclub as a teenager.