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5th Column

What’s in an Author’s Name?

Recently, someone asked me why I was reading Zelensky’s memoir. I gently corrected her – the author’s name printed on the cover of the book was, in fact, Roger Zelazny, the late-great ‘golden age’ science fiction author. It was A Night in the Lonesome October, published in 1993,

In Transit

I wake up to five Instagram notifications from one of my long-distance best friends. She is on vacation from one side of the world to the next, which is still a world away from me. Smiling from the screen and holding up her ring finger, she is elated. I

The Sky Serpent

There was a serpent in the sky. It surprised me at first, looming venerably over the city with its long plated neck, and reptilian snout. It either had a long forked tongue, or was breathing fire. Depending on your perspective. Its nostrils flared, its snout turned left and right, peering

The Inevitability Game

The theatre smelled of polish and drizzle, though perhaps it was only the memory of drizzle clinging to our coats as we shuffled into the dark. Sometimes the dark is cinema; sometimes it is a fuselage above the Atlantic; sometimes it is the baseline of Arthur Ashe Stadium; sometimes it

Harmony’s Triumph

The theatre smelled of polished brass and simulated candle wax, the kind designed to whisper “tradition” without ever producing soot. Tonight was another grand premiere produced by The Theatre Simulacra. The audience filed in, eyes bright with the eagerness to lay claim to have witnessed the latest and greatest production.

The Unbearable Sainthood of Jannik Sinner

The Marvel supervillain Thanos was known for his iconic declarative: “I am inevitable.” It’s not hard to imagine Jannik Sinnner, the new hegemon and (depending on where you stand) heel of men's tennis – the world number one-ranked player at the time of this article's

Love, Actually… Costs Too Much

London. February. Leicester Square. I emerge from the dimly lit bowels of Prince Charles Cinema into the customary city drizzle and try to make myself cry. Celine Song’s breakout debut Past Lives just finished playing and I’m convinced that I should feel *something*. This is, after all, cinema.