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  • The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster — a review

    This is definitely the best Paul Auster I have read. I have always been intrigued by his novels but found that they start well but quickly fall to pieces: the City Of Glass, Mr Vertigo, the Music Of Chance being the ones I have tried. The Brooklyn Follies though engages throughout: it has the classic […]

  • Gang violence in Britain

    Two fascinating pieces in the Guardian about gang culture, which appear to suggest it’s so much the break-up of the family that’s the problem with gang violence but that many youths get dragged into violence by their families. The older generation of yobs are inducting the younger ones into their ways. The report on the […]

  • Time further endorses the findings in ‘Yob Nation’

    1. One of the major contentions in ‘Yob Nation’ was that Blair’s government was a yobbish government, motivated by an aggressive, theatrical desire to promote itself. The publication of Campbell’s diaries, countless commentators on Blair’s Iraq disaster, and the news that Brown is now cancelling classic ‘yob’ innovations such as gambling super-casinos, now show us […]

  • “You are an arrogant, young man”

    It was the ‘young’ part I liked the best. Peregrine Worsthorne was not very happy with me. We were sitting around microphones in a Radio 4 studio, talking about ‘Knowing Your Place’ for the lunchtime Radio 4 programme ‘Off The Page’. I started being provocative because the debate was becoming rather cosy. I said that […]

  • Sky News — Britain is broken

    Appeared with the Labour MP Frank Field on Sky News this morning. I was asked to argue the case that Britain is broken. I pointed out that we have the unhappiest children in the western world, that violent crime is soaring, that alcohol-related violence is being actively encouraged with the new licensing laws and that […]

  • Radio City Interview

    Was interviewed for quite some time, twenty minutes, about parents being to blame for their children’s anti-social behaviour. Gave some grisly accounts and accidentally swore on air, recounting what I heard one parent say to their child. The programme felt pretty wild actually, one of those radio phone-in shows where people phone in and rant […]

  • Chris Woodhead, useless teachers and Radio 5 Live

    Shelagh Fogarty interviewed me on Radio 5 Breakfast about the lack of subject specialists teaching in schools today. According to a new report supervised by Chris Woodhead for the think-tank politeia (

  • Gilbert in the Week

    My article on violence in schools in the Times was selected by the Week (http://info.theweek.co.uk/?bbcam=adwds&bbkid=the+week&x=&jtid=172319&client_code=)as one of the best articles of the week: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1867904.ece‘

  • Big Day At The Beeb

    Natasha Kaplinski, my interviewer on BBC News 24 I had a long day of interviews at the Beeb. All of them were about the new law that gives the right for teachers to search pupils for weapons. I was supportive of the law, having searched quite a few bags in my time. First up was […]

  • Marry Me — Great Novel

    Finished Marry Me by John Updike today. The book tails off a bit in the last fifty pages, but generally it’s a total winner. Especially after reading the appalling Kiran Desai, Updike’s prose sings. The novel is about two couples having adulterous affairs with each other. It’s a lyrical but very funny book, and never […]

  • Channel 5 Stand-Down

    So I am sitting in a Channel 5 Studio, make up on, mic trailing underneath my shirt, ready to talk with Jellyellie (yes, we met again today) about teenagers when we are asked to leave the studio before the cameras rolled. There was a more important news story, and we weren’t needed. I talked to […]

  • Kiran Desai — The Inheritance Of Rubbish

    Tried reading the Booker prize winning novel, The Inheritance Of Loss, and had to give up because it’s so poorly written: episodic, unengaging, and predictably politically correct. My feelings were confirmed when I listened to her reading at Bookslam: she read a passage from the novel about an Indian working in a restaurant in New […]

  • Local Radio Interviews

    Appeared on four radio shows today. Sitting in a lonely, sealed-off room in the far reaches of Broadcasting House, I spoke through the microphone to BBC Three Counties Radio (pretty brief one) BBC Radio Shrewsbury (v g, the DJ actually had read bits of the book!), BBC Radio Wales (a half-hour interview), and BBC Radio […]

  • My book launch

  • Gilbert on Radio 4

  • Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  • Whateverman

  • You murdered me — Rachel Cusk’s ‘Arlington Park’

  • Sweet Bird Of Disaster

  • BBC London News Debate

    I was a guest on Thursday night on BBC London News, talking about whether children between the ages of 10-14 should be put in prison. The other guest was Enver Solomon, the Deputy Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. He was arguing that children should be given therapy instead of being punished. […]

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