Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements is a collection of essays, interviews and journalism which in the UK is available only as a Kindle e-book. It contains some of my earliest journalism from The Wire magazine, when I was commissioned to interview musicians like Brian Eno and Steve Reich, as well as essays about most of my favourite writers and film directors. The full contents are as follows:

Marginal Notes

Henry Fielding: Tom Jones / Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels / Laurence Sterne and BS Johnson / Alasdair Gray (I): 1982, Janine / Billy Wilder (I): Diary of an Obsession / The Canterbury Scene / Interviewing Brian Eno / Interviewing Steve Reich / Frederic Tuten: Tintin in the New World / Interviewing William Gaddis / NF Simpson / Kenneth Williams / Jacques Tati / David Nobbs: The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin / Virago Modern Classics / Rosamond Lehmann: Dusty Answer / Rosamond Lehmann: The Echoing Grove / Billy Wilder (II) / Hitchcock and Disney / Film adaptations / Bill Forsyth: Comfort and Joy / John  Davis / Lindsay Anderson: Britannia Hospital /  ‘State of the Nation’ Novels / Alasdair Gray (II): Old Men in Love / Stefano Benni: Margherita Dolce Vita / Louis Paul Boon: Chapel Road.

Doubtful Statements

Why I Write / Shropshire / Cambridge / Music and Me / Memories of the 1980s / What a Carve Up! / Interviewed (I): by Philip Tew / The Paradox of Satire (I) / The Paradox of Satire (II) / New Labour / London / Bromsgrove / Filming The Rotters’ Club / Writing the Contemporary / Interviewed (II): by François Gallix and Vanessa Guignery / Where I Write / Christmas in Tromso / Through Switzerland by Train / Say Hi to the Rivers and the Mountains / Interviewed (III): by Roberto Bertinetti / The Death of Margaret Thatcher / The Tolkien Lecture, 2012: Doubtful Statements.

(The French print edition is shorter and omits some of these items. It also contains an introduction by Vanessa Guignery.)