Articles

I generally write about the arts, travel and eccentricity. If I can tie up all three in one story then I am a happy man. I have written for The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, The Observer, Financial Times, The Independent and The London Evening Standard.

I am interested in architecture and am London editor of Dwell, which is a people-friendly modern architecture magazine based in San Francisco. I indulge my interest in the seaside by writing for Coast and also write about arts and theory for Dazed and Confused.

I previously wrote for the wonderfully eccentric (and much-mourned) Nest and spent a few years writing columns about hoaxes and pranks for Bizarre magazine before starting work on my book about English oddity.

I have always had a soft spot for 1960s group the Shangri-Las, so a trip to New York to interview their singer Mary Weiss for the Daily Telegraph magazine was too good an opportunity to pass up. >> The Leader's back

Watching Shane Meadows' film This Is England was uncannily like being taken back to my own youth as a tiny skinhead. This piece for the Guardian has all the gory details (and no, I was not a rightwing skinhead, as the headline may suggest!). >> 'Nazi salutes were part of the fun'

The Evens could play nightclubs and rock venues, yet they choose to play church halls and bowls clubs instead. I meet Fugazi frontman Ian Mackaye and Amy Farina to find out why. >> Time to get Evens

In the summer of 2006 I was taught five dance styles in five days for this piece on Dance Week in the Guardian. It was chosen by Guardian readers as one of their articles of the year. >> How I learned to stop worrying and love the dancefloor

Artangel turned my home town into a giant film set for the making of a modern version of the story of Exodus. I went back for the Guardian to see what the locals made of it all. >> Plagues of frogs and lice

This piece for the New Statesman tells the forgotten part played by the band Crass in the history of punk and politics in the UK. You can even listen to it if you like. >> Forever punk

Talking to Lockstock star Nick Moran before the opening night of his play about troubled 1960s recording legend Joe Meek for the Guardian.  >> Nightmares on wax

more art and music articles

Portland, Oregon is a place of pilgrimage for those who enjoy all things literary in the US. I visited the city's bookstores for the FT, from the enormous to the tiny. >> Easy life that speaks volumes

Tracey Emin and I revisit our home town together for The Observer - and plot a takeover that would put Margate back on the tourist map. >> For Tracey home is where the art is...

Perhaps I am just cursed, but whenever I stay at a design hotel something goes wrong, as I discuss in this Financial Times article. >> Hotels to offer a good night's sleep

I try out the strange world of geocaching for Hotline, as I wander vacantly around Milton Keynes holding a GPS receiver in the air and looking for ammunition boxes hidden in the woods. >> The curious world of geocaching

more travel articles

With a growing prison population can how we build rather than how many we build offer a solution? I explore this idea for the New Statesman in a piece about Wil Alsop and his Creative Prisons . >> Gild your own cage

An interview with philosopher Alain De Botton about his latest musings on the built environment for Dwell magazine. Can architecture lift our mood or only reflect it? >> The Architecture of Happiness

Sean Godsell was a crocked footballer who failed his exams, but that spurred him on to be one of the world's most exciting young architects and even care about people along the way. >> Futureshack to the rescue

Meredith Bowles loves a barn. So much so that he designed one with a modern twist and environmentally-friendly features for his family to live in. From Dwell. >> Paint it black

more architecture articles

I spent several late nights with the noise patrol teams of Islington and Bristol councils for this lengthy piece on what they do and the impact of neighbour noise on everyday life. Contains nuts.
>> Keep it down

Interviewing comedian Gareth Berliner about how a chronic bowel disease saved his life. A health section article in the Daily Telegraph.
>> A funny way to survive

Having entered several odd contests in the past Staremaster sounded like a breeze. But I discovered the horrors of the dry-eye death phase of competition staring in this article for the Daily Telegraph. >> One blink and it's over

I had never been in a riot until I went to visit Hexham near Newcastle for the Guardian. I came home a fully fledged rioter, though I did have to dress funny. >> Are we dead yet?

Meeting the wonderfully dapper and politely revolutionary Chaps as they protest against incivility, improper tailoring and running shoes in London. >> There's a good chap

Could the homeless population of London be a handy but under-utilised resource? I go out and about to find out, with a fistful of fivers. >> God help the homeless

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