I was so looking forward to this film. Although it had always been on my radar, I first watched the original (director’s cut) in the mid-nineties while I was in my early twenties having bought it because it was going cheap in HMV. I found it totally enthralling, gripping and…

First we have to give props to Mehdi Hasan for asking this question. Many a time I have wondered as a ‘black’ person, where is the empathy for ‘the struggle’ from our Muslim brothers and sisters? Here in the UK, the reality TV show ‘Muslims Like Us’ lifted the lid-in…

I remember the first time I came across the word ‘iconoclastic’. It was used in an article about Miles Davis, specifically in connection…

When I first heard about the upcoming film ‘American Sniper’ directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper, I knew straight away that I wanted to see it. My dad being a big fan, I was ‘brought-up’ on Eastwood films from a young age and I feel that I know…

In Praise of his St Paul’s at Covent Garden The place I want to talk about is made of stone, a material that is everywhere in central London, and in every form; hewn, slivered, restrained, reconstituted, a valuable material devalued by ubiquity and constructional taxidermy, diced within an inch of…

Effie Gray….The Fairytale I have thus entitled this review, not to disparage a film that I admit I found as a Ruskin fan, a difficult watch, nor indeed to take issue with the version of events as recounted by Emma Thompson’s script, but rather (and I know how this will…

Beyond Utilitas Firmitas & Venustas The particulars of the building’s genesis make grim recollection. Stephen Lawrence was murdered in 1993, the year I took my GCSE’s and by which time I had pretty much decided that I was going to be an architect. That’s an awkward way to begin an…

Refectory Building at Malling Abbey by Thomas Ford & Partners —

A View on O’Donnell & Tuomey’s Saw Swee Hock Student Centre for The London School of Economics & Political Science — I used to work for the Capital Development branch of the London School of Economics Estates Department. In the office, a finely crafted wooden model of the yet to be built LSE Student Centre (as it was then to be known) took pride of place and at that scale, the…