D J Taylor
Porn Again
Now, Where were we? Oh yes, Trainspotting, in so far as one could decipher the Pictish dialect, ended with Renton’s drug-money scam: Sick Boy, Spud, Begbie and Second Chance left high and dry as our man took off with the cash (not that much cash, in reality) towards a new life played out a very long way from tanked-up, skagged-out Leith. Spud, the least devious and most sympathetic member of the cast, eventually got his share of the take. Psycho Begbie and the others did not, thereby offering a huge window of opportunity for the sequel which, some years later and at elaborate length, Porno now supplies.
Whatever one may have thought of Trainspotting, it undoubtedly fell into the category of literature defined half a century ago by Anthony Powell when he first came across Lucky Jim: those novels whose message in effect is ‘Life’s not like that; it’s like this’, and whose chief merit, irrespective of
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
The first holiday camps had an 'ethos of muscular health as a marker of social respectability, and were alcohol-free. How different from our modern Costa Brava – not to mention the innumerable other coasts around the world now changed forever'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/from-mont-blanc-to-magaluf
'The authorities are able to detain individuals in solitary confinement for up to six months at a secret location', which 'increases the risk to the prisoner of torture'.
@lucyjpop looks at two cases of China's brutal crackdown on free expression.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/xu-zhiyong-thupten-lodoe
'"The Last Colony" is, among other things, part of the campaign to shift the British position through political pressure. As with all good propaganda, Sands’s case is based in truth, if not the whole of it.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/empire-strikes-back