Bamboo: Essays and Criticism

People and Places

This is a catch-all title to enable me to include articles I’ve written that often have a bearing — sometimes remote — on books I have published or the release of films I have written. Both my essays on the British “Caff” and minicabs, for example, were designed to promote, first, my novel Armadillo and then the broadcast of my three-part adaptation of it on the BBC. More and more the publication of a book seems to involve the author in all manner of ancillary journalism. The advantage of this, however, is that the article can be more uncompromising, and to the point: the necessary finesse involved in slipping hard facts into a work of fiction is not required. In this kind of journalism polemic overrules disinterestedness: a case has to be made as entertainingly as possible and sometimes that motive is exhilarating.