A very upbeat interview with A.A. Gill published in yesterday's Sunday Times (23rd September 2012)

Jonathan Meades remembers when we first met. I can’t. Even when he reminds me, I can’t remember. It was food-related, it was a long time ago, and every subsequent meeting and most conver­sations since have been food-related. But they could quite easily have been about architecture, art, society, fashion…

This seemed rather positive to me, especially for the Guardian. My editor tells me Ms Mangan is a notable humourist.

An hour of Jonathan Meades leaves me feeling like a medieval monk who has just completed his self-flagellating stint for the day. It is almost unbearably painful but, oh!, the flush of pride after such a feat of endurance and the sweet relief when it stops.

In the final episode…

This is the second section of Jonathan Meades shooting script for The Isle of Rust (you can read the first section here)

PART FOUR

THE ISLAND STARTS TO LOOK LESS IDYLLIC

58 - KITSCHY HOUSES

STORNOWAY.

E END OF MEMORIAL AVENUE

AND 

WILLOWGLEN RD, A858, (100M W OF

PERCEVAL RD JUNCTION)

Whatever wealth is generated is mostly well concealed. It is very seldom manifest in the built environment…

As it's nearly Christmas I thought I'd get you all in the festive spirit with some musings on the horror that is Christmas dinner.

"All The Trimmings" is among the most dispiriting constructions in the English language. It recalls Kingsley Amis's despised "red or white?", a phrase which evokes bonhomie dissembling meanness, banality posing as blokeish largesse, coy bluster, seasonal ennui. In The…

Here's a piece - Rural Rides - from Museum without Walls in which my memories of a semi-rural childhood spent plashing around on the rivers of Wiltshire are marshalled into an attack on the paralysing British obsession with the picturesque.

Rural Rides (2002)

We cannot escape our earliest domestic topographies. They adhere down the years as a sort of measure. The slum is as potent in this regard…