I like word games too. My new one is to find minor grammar mistakes and correct them. The twist is that I come off as a major dick.

AN anti-Christmas-themed one

AN ipad

I know what you mean. It seems to me that all Le Carre's spy novels have the outward appearance of celebrating the service, but are actually quite anti-war and subversive of the cultural establishment. He draws you in with the trappings of boy's own adventure derring-do, but then hooks you with some pretty…

Read the book before watching the TV and film adaptations.  It does a far better job of building tension about who the traitor is than the visual medium can do. The mystery is all about following the paper trail and closely reading dialogue rather than action and 'splosions. Yes, that's right, this book makes admin…

Stop Podcasting Yourself is the greatest. One of the only podcasts of this sort where the episodes with no guests are often the best. But their guests are good too - no matter if no one outside of Canada has heard of them… yet. Check out the Jon Dore episodes to get a taste of what we SPY fans knew before anyone else…

RagingBear: Laura Marling used to go out with Marcus Mumford and Mumford plays on her two previous albums before 'Creature'.

Thanks for the list. Agreed about Show of Hands. See them live if possible! And (unlike a lot of bands) check out their live albums first before listening to their studio stuff. So good.

I knew Marcus Mumford when he was a teenager. One day he came up to me all excited and said he was going to pursue a music career instead of going to college. 
I told him it was a bad idea. 
Cool story bro, etc. etc.

Skip the film. Read the book. Its an excellent book, and waaaay more about growing up in the shadow of a famous friend then about the famous friend himself.

Yes, I would also like to know about the extra songs. Is it really new stuff, or just a collection of B-sides that any half-decent U2 fan would have already collected sometime in the past 20 years?

A voice like the carpet in an old hotel.

Also, I live in London. The TMZ article says he was "looting champagne from a drug store". We don't have drug stores. We have pharmacies and chemists. And you cannot get champagne in a pharmacy. So yes, bullshit in yet another way.

G.G. Allin

Hi Jordan!

All I know is that that Jesus fellow was an interesting guy and that I wish people were more like him.

In reply to the complaint that the companions were getting younger and younger (and therefore the TARDIS was becoming more about sexual tension than time travel), the TV critic A.A. Gill pointed out that in fact the companions have always pretty much been the same age. Its the creepy old Doctors who are getting…

What is it with Doctor Who specifically and with Brits in general and setting things in World War 2?  We get it - it was your finest hour, etc etc. Enough already!

Stephen
!

So This is England
I was (am) an Anglophile but through books and history rather than music. It took me from strip-mall North America to the UK where I have been living for the past 16 years or so. I still try to make 'pilgrimages' to British sites which have literary or cultural significance and it works every…