Xan Brooks
@xanbrooks.bsky.social
Novelist, journalist. THE CATCHERS (https://tinyurl.com/TheCatchers2024)
The final part of Colson Whitehead's Harlem trilogy is a bouncy primary-coloured 1980s jukebox of a crime thriller, but it's the melancholic counterbeat - the sense of the vast, indifferent city - that makes it pop. Nice work, good closer. www.theguardian.com/books/2026/j...
Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead review – final part of the Harlem Trilogy is freewheeling fun
The grit and grandeur of 80s New York drive this rollicking story of an underground wheeler-dealer
theguardian.com
Unashamedly, un-embarrassedly, un-timidly Labour. The unequivocal snap of firmish newish leadership
Delighted to see Trump’s most-hated European nation dancing into the World Cup final. Such a crisp, fluid, joyous performance
RIP Sam Neill. So many great, knotty performances, so many bold choices, such a consistently interesting career & still - shamefully - this interview snippet was the first thing I thought of
High-stakes 90-minute heist movie with shades of Touch of Evil except it's about three buddies on a mission to crack a Mexico City hotel & set cherry bombs off outside Harry Kane's room.
The last two books I’ve read, & part of a rare rich seam of contemporary fiction. One a light-footed American novel of ideas; the other a cock-eyed British tour of the minimum wage shadowlands. Both short (130 & 118-pages), sharp & perfectly realised
The most weirdly mis-billed & oversold politician of modern times: the crusading charismatic human rights lawyer from humble beginnings who had a tin ear for politics, zero presentation skills & exploded like an air-sensitive chemical when introduced to Downing St. A tragic, ignoble vertiginous fall
It's not quite an emperor's new clothes moment, but there's been a definite shift in how world leaders are handling these airy fabrications. Trump's been spouting this kind of shit for years & they're finally feeling able to push back & correct him www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
Italy PM Meloni ‘stunned’ by Trump’s claims she begged him for a photo
US president provokes outrage as PM says he ‘totally invented’ story in interview with Italian media
theguardian.com
My piece on conspiracy theories builds to a dark revelation that may not be true or even there at all, fill your boots www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ju...
You can handle the truth! Why cinema suddenly loves conspiracy theories
From Disclosure Day to Backrooms, a new wave of films promote stories of paranoia, alienation and mistrust. What are they trying to tell us?
theguardian.com
This week's @the-independent.com column, on Orson Welles, Voodoo Macbeth, colour-conscious casting & the Lupita Nyong'o affair www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
Elon Musk would have hated Orson Welles, the pioneer of colour-blind casting
Years before ‘Citizen Kane’, the legendary filmmaker directed an all-Black version of ‘Macbeth’ to raves from across the sociopolitical spectrum. It puts to shame the current, Musk-led controversy ove...
independent.co.uk
What a lovely, lively, scratchy, warm interview this is. Plays like a brilliant little two-hander - Linklater's Before Midnight by way of The Dresser www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ma...
‘I want to hit 100’: Derek Jacobi on Aids, ageing and failing to boil an egg
The giant of stage and screen is 87 and still hates looking in the mirror. At home with his husband, he talks about weeping, sleeping with Daniel Craig, terrifying directors and the joys of white wine...
theguardian.com
For @the-independent.com this week, on Lean times at Cannes www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
Meet the real David Lean: Classic films, hundreds of lovers, and actors who hated him
He directed ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, ‘Brief Encounter’ and ‘The Bridge of the River Kwai’, and influenced everyone from Steven Spielberg to Wes Anderson. A new documentary at Cannes celebrates his vast l...
independent.co.uk
"... because highlighting the issue of Brexit could make it more difficult for Labour to beat Reform" - the dead-eyed zombie paradigm of modern British politics
Almost as fascinating to see what didn't make the cut here as what did. No Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird or The Grapes of Wrath. No Updike, no Roth. The 20th-century American lions all diminished & gone into the west www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...
The 100 best novels of all time
The top 100 novels of all time published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide. How many have you read?
theguardian.com
Pleased my vote helped get My Antonia over the line in the Guardian's '100 best novels of all time'. In with a bullet at 100, only one of my choices to so far make the grade & a thing of careworn clear-eyed beauty. Perfect 1st sentence sets the direction of travel www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...
I have a story in this excellent collection, which is only marginally less excellent for having my story in it. Thirteen Gothic pieces from the modern market, published this week by the fabulous Comma Press.
If he'd done this J6 at the Capitol he'd be looking at a full presidential pardon
AZ Intel@azintel.bsky.social · 3mo agoWhite House Correspondents’ Dinner gunman Cole Allen’s full anti-Trump manifesto: nypost.com/2026/04/26/u...
This week’s @the-independent.com column: on the reissued Fight Club, a film that’s been hegsethed by the incels www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
Fight Club deserves a better reputation – it’s not just angry incels who love it
As it is re-released in cinemas, David Fincher’s 1999 thriller is – once again – worth talking about, if only because it’s still swaggering and seething and lightly dangerous. Just look at the men’s r...
independent.co.uk
In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “Trump didn’t just hire incompetent people,” Frank Bruni writes. “He didn’t just hire lickspittles. He visited some perverse preserve of the morally degenerate — some superstore of grifters and goons — and said, ‘I’ll take the worst of the worst.’”
Opinion | And Then There Were None, Trump Administration Edition
Normal language is inadequate and precedents are irrelevant when it comes to appraising the senior administration officials of the president’s second term.
nyti.ms
This is such excellent news. The flagship TV documentary series. The ideal choice of skipper to steer it home www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...
Asif Kapadia to direct 70 Up, last chapter of influential ITV documentary series
Film-maker says it is ‘incredible honour’ to pick up baton from Michael Apted who died in 2021
theguardian.com
Upward Bound by Woody Brown. This is a fabulous first novel www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a...
Upward Bound by Woody Brown review – extraordinary debut from a non-speaking autistic author
This garrulous, charming story of a young man stuck in a daycare centre for disabled adults offers a vital insider’s perspective
theguardian.com
Trump just openly stating his intention to commit genocide at this point: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."
Joe Eszterhas on alcohol, cocaine and Basic Instinct, the unholy Easter trinity www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ap...
‘Coke and booze didn’t help my creativity’: Joe Eszterhas on his wild times – and his supernatural, anti-woke Basic Instinct reboot
He was the screenwriting colossus behind Flashdance, Jagged Edge, Showgirls and more. Now clean, ‘Hollywood’s Shakespeare’ talks about today’s scared studios, his refugee trauma – and taking acid with...
theguardian.com
"I'll be 70 in 2026 if we're all still here" Lovely & strange to revisit High Hopes with its gaswork-studded Kings Cross & defiant last-stand socialism - like finding 1980s England preserved in an air pocket. One of the great film couples (Ruth Sheen, Phil Davis). One of the great final scenes
