New Statesman -

My bath mat's campaign for the presidency

Will Self — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:00:00 GMT

I revealed the intimacy of my relationship with Dr Moo, a half-man, half-cow chimera created following the new embryology bill

To the sickest-looking building in London, Portcullis House, to be interviewed by Ed Vaizey (Con, Wantage), for the House magazine. I point out to Ed how strange it is one can't visit one's legislators by bicycle: I had to ask the machine gun-toting police to keep an eye on mine, for fear that their colleagues would remove it as a terrorist threat. He concurs, and observes - with some self-satisfaction [...]

Inside the green zone

Will Self — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Wildwood: a Journey Through Trees
Roger Deakin Hamish Hamilton, 416pp, �20

Roger Deakin's Waterlog was the literary gem of 1999. The conceit was simple: the author set out from his moated farmhouse in Suffolk to swim across Britain in a succession of streams, rivers, ponds, fens, tarns, lochs, pools - natural and man-made - and, of course, the sea itself. Emulating the protagonist of John Cheever's classic short story, "The Swimmer", Deakin created a special kind of literary classic, at once [...]

Senseless evil

Will Self — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Hannibal Rising
Thomas Harris William Heinemann, 336pp, �17.99
ISBN 978-0385339414
Thomas Harris's thrillers promise to explain the most grotesque crimes committed by their serial killers. In real life, it's not quite so simple

One day in the early 1980s, the public-affairs office of the FBI asked Agent Robert Ressler to take a researching author around the Behavioural Science Unit - an outfit Ressler himself had played a major part in developing, and which was charged with the task of profiling, tracking and bringing to justice serial killers. The agent spent several hours with the author, showing him slides for various cases and discussing [...]

Stop making sense

Will Self — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 12:00:00 GMT

Dr Clock's Handbook
edited by Mel Gooding and Julian Rothenstein Redstone Press, 168pp, �19.99
ISBN 187000339X

What a seductive price �19.99 is. If this book were �20, I wouldn't advise anyone to buy it (although it is a very fine book indeed); yet at �19.99 it represents a fantastic bargain, being in every respect a lavish volume, hardback, full of beautiful full-colour illustrations, secured for under 20 quid. It should be possible to divine the point between �20 and �19.99 where the purchase of Dr Clock's [...]

Beware the fork-wielding terrorist

Will Self — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 12:00:00 GMT

I mused on how history is rewritten by the victors. Even during the IRA bombing, we teenagers still had a lurking respect for them. Not my son

Heading out from Gatwick to Ireland through security, I am struck by the large numbers of forks that have been dumped in those Perspex boxes full of proscribed objects. Do people set off on journeys armed with a full set of cutlery? Then, on seeing the metal detectors, do they think: "No chance of getting away with this. I know, I'll ditch the fork." Or are there determined terrorists who [...]

Now is the time for a new CND

Will Self — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 12:00:00 GMT

Will Self calls for a broad coalition to mobilise once again, and expel foreign warmongers from our soil

The day before the deputy editor of this magazine asked me to write this piece, I coincidentally ran into Bruce Kent, who was the presiding spirit of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament during the heady days of the early 1980s. I encountered him while visiting a friend in prison. He too, I hasten to add, was only there for the afternoon. "I don't do much prison visiting," he told me, [...]

The first literary celebrity . Portrayed by Boswell as an idle pensioner, Samuel Johnson in fact spent most of his life working furiously as a hack. It was the 18th century's burgeoning print culture that made him famous - and which created the need for his most famous work

Will Self — Mon, 16 May 2005 12:00:00 GMT

Dr Johnson's Dictionary: the extraordinary story of the book that defined the world
Henry Hitchings John Murray, 278pp, �14.99
ISBN 0719566312

Reading is my second favourite pastime - but rereading is my favourite. Henry Hitchings's book on Samuel Johnson's mighty Dictionary is so good, so apposite, so chewy and edible, that I felt as if I were rereading it on my first pass. How, one wonders, given the mighty size of the Johnson industry, could it be that this particular book was not written decades ago, if not centuries? Other writers [...]

Hostile climate

Will Self — Mon, 31 May 2004 12:00:00 GMT

High Tide: news from a warming world
Mark Lynas Flamingo, 341pp, �16.99
ISBN 086319009X

I'm cool about global warming. I don't doubt that it's going to happen and I confidently expect that the forecasts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be shown up as overly optimistic, in regard both to rising temperatures and controlling emissions. Yes, it's going to happen - and we are not going to stop it. The IPCC estimates a worst-case scenario of a 5 Celsius increase in mean [...]

Diary - Will Self

Will Self — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 12:00:00 GMT

In Argyle Street on Boxing Day, I find teeming crowds. Clearly the masses can withstand only a few scant hours away from the hamster wheel of consumerism

A 6am start to get the plane to Edinburgh. I've never flown from London's City Airport, and even at this hour, with somnolent children to load into the car, I'm still struck by the peculiar sense of transposition: flying from the East End, it just doesn't seem right. And as for the Legoland of Canary Wharf rising up out of Docklands, who'd have thought a couple of decades ago that [...]

How the left always loses. In being so right about so much that has gone wrong, Nick Cohen shows exactly why new Labour has thrown itself in the dustbin of history. But he's not quite negative enough, writes Will Self

Will Self — Mon, 22 Sep 2003 12:00:00 GMT

Pretty Straight Guys
Nick Cohen Faber & Faber, 296pp, �14.99
ISBN 0571220037

In his introductory remarks to this exercise in sustained rage, Nick Cohen writes: "As a believer in the basics of news journalism, I try to supply evidence to show how I've reached my conclusions." However, he concedes that he no more tries to be neutral than he does to be comprehensive: "This," he concedes, "is an argumentative book." I have always had a soft spot for Cohen's journalism; he picks [...]