Two words frequently seen together in news- papers are ‘doctors’ and ‘warn’. ‘Doctors warn of mobile phone elbow!’ ‘Doctors warn eating vegetables may cause cancer!’ ‘Doctors warn coloured contacted lenses are bad for your health!’ In fact, one of the few aspects of modern life of which doctors have yet to warn us is the doctor’s warning.Their most recent alert came earlier this week. ‘Doctors have warned that wearing too-tight trousers could seriously damage your health,’ ran the report. ...read
Craig Brown for the Daily Mail's recent articles
CRAIG BROWN: Swimming in Britain's seas? It's a scream!
Eeek! Aaargh! Oooh! No! Oh my GOD! These are the sounds I hear outside my bedroom window at this time of year. Beside the seaside in June, the screams and yelps of people taking to the North Sea for their first swim of the year is as familiar as the cawing of seagulls overhead. There are minor variations. Sometimes, an Oooh! comes before an Eeek! and No! comes before an Aaargh! Occasionally, the phrase ‘Oh my GOD!’ is simply repeated over and over again, louder each time, like an off-key Gregorian chant sung under extreme duress. ...read
Why did Abba lose the Battle of Waterloo? CRAIG BROWN'S Eurovision song contest exam, module one
The University of Melbourne is to offer a degree course on the Eurovision Song Contest. CRAIG BROWN suggests some of the exam questions that Eurovision students could face. ...read
June 2015
May 2015
- Vote for Dave... and get a free banana! CRAIG BROWN reveals his highlights of the election countdown
April 2015
NEW FICTION
- LITERARY FICTION The lives of Katherine Tennison, husband Rick and their son run along the predictable lines of the affluent classes of West London.
- CRIME There is a continuing plot featuring Commandant Servez of the Toulouse crime squad and his duel with a sadomasochistic serial killer.
- POPULAR The Flemings, Johnson's fictional Notting Hill family, are back in the hood after five years in rural Dorset.
- MUST READS Rupert Brooke is best known for the opening to his WWI poem, The Soldier: 'If I should die, think only this of me.'
- HISTORICAL A few pages into volume one of what are known as the Neapolitan Novels, I was completely hooked.
- DEBUT FICTION Rakoff achieved extraordinary acclaim for her 2014 memoir, My Salinger Year, about her coming of age in New York's publishing world.
- PICTURE BOOKS It's 47 years since the publication of children's classic Rosie's Walk, and now Rosie the hen reappears.