‘American patience snapped, and Washington took matters into its own hands.’
I returned from a long reporting trip in late 2006 to find a letter waiting. It was handwritten, in a spidery script that sloped off the page. ‘I read with great interest your articles in the Guardian concerning Osama bin Laden and the “war” in the North West Frontier,’ it began. ‘I spent …
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘These days the tempest of Taliban violence ripping across the frontier has shaken Peshawar to its core.’
‘There’s this paradoxical nostalgia where even though yi suffered, yi miss it.’
Memoir by Graeme Armstrong.
‘In clothes, I met strangeness with strangeness. They dressed me with a kind of distanced power.’
Rosie Findlay on fashion and religion.
A conversation between Kamila Shamsie and Sunjeev Sahota.
‘I’m too tired she said / to be this happy / & we laughed without / moving our hands’
