There are constants in the media landscape, the images that, even half-seen, alert us to another excitingly dire occurrence.
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Gordon Burn was born in Newcastle in 1948. He is the author of the novels Alma Cogan (winner of the 1992 Whitbread First Novel Prize), Fullalove and The North of England Home Service. He is also the author of the works of non-fiction, Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son (winner of a US Edgar Allan Poe award), Pocket Money and Happy Like Murderers. He wrote the text for Damien Hirst’s book, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now (1997), before their collaboration On the Way to Work (2001). In 1991 he was named Columnist of the Year in the Magazine Publishing Awards for his sports column in Esquire. He died on July 17, 2009.
More about the author →Tom Pilston is a photographer who collaborated with Gordon Burn on their piece 'The Trial', which appeared in Granta 53.
More about the author →‘The line between reality and its representation has become rivetingly porous.’
‘Some of these bigger characters, Muhammad Ali or Lennox Lewis, they can become these mythologic, mythological characters, or these godlike figures.’
Declan Ryan on contemporary boxing.
‘Everybody knows a game is not worth watching unless the players are trying to win.’
Thomas Meaney introduces the issue.
‘I suddenly had one of those I can’t find words for it one of those moments of joy I suppose it is.’
Fiction by Caryl Churchill.
‘Real tennis players like to say that theirs is the only proper racket sport because the rest aren’t difficult enough.’
Clare Bucknell on a historical form of tennis.
Caleb Klaces on being inspired by Van Gogh’s third image, found during the X-ray scanning of one of Van Gogh’s early, repainted canvases.
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