Christina Patterson
Christina Patterson joined The Independent in 2003 as deputy literary editor and is now a full-time writer and columnist. A former director of the Poetry Society, and literary programmer at the Southbank Centre, she writes on culture, politics, books, travel and the arts and does the weekly "big interview" for the Arts & Books section. Interviewees have included Martin Amis, Alastair Campbell, Werner Herzog, David Starkey and Bryn Terfel.
Christina Patterson: Here's how we know our feelings are real
I was in a monastery in Syria when I heard that Michael Jackson had died. "What a shame!" I thought. "What a sad life!" And then I went back to looking at icons. (The kind of icons that feature a Madonna and child, I mean a real Madonna and child, a Madonna-looking-good-at-1,500, not just at 50, and a child that wasn't "rescued" from the other side of the world.)
Recently by Christina Patterson
Christina Patterson: Hurrah for democracy – and that World Wide Web
Thursday, 2 July 2009
There are certain moments in a job that you'll always remember. One of mine was the day I logged on to the website of the organisation I was running, to find it had disappeared. In place of thousands of pages of information about poetry, education projects and events, there were offers to counter my erectile dysfunction and hair loss. They were not very poetic and nor was my response. It had a lot less characters than a haiku and, as a past participle, summed up where we were. Not, as a misreading of Larkin might suggest, safely tucked up by our mums and dads, but – well, sorry to be rude, but screwed.
Christina Patterson: I'm giving up hope for our postal service
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Yesterday's post brought a lovely surprise. There, among the bills and the Somerfield fliers (I get one almost every day, and if there is a Somerfield within a five-mile radius of where I live, I've never seen it) was a parcel. Not a slim volume from a poetry publisher I've never heard of, not a pile of books from Amazon to plough through for my next interview, but a proper, squashy brown paper parcel. And in the middle of it, the handwriting of a friend.
Christina Patterson: Shelley and middle-class musical chairs
Saturday, 20 June 2009
Shelley, who said that poets are the "unacknowledged legislators of the world", might have been amused that a high court judge who hit the headlines this week shared the name of his rival, Coleridge. He might have been less amused by his message. "There is a tendency," said Mr Justice Coleridge on Wednesday, "especially among the chattering classes, to assume that we have attained a social utopia, in which we are entirely and happily free from taboos, stigmas and other constraints on human behaviour. It sounds so beguiling: let us do what we want, when we want and sort out any mess as we go along."
Christina Patterson: If you don't like food, you don't like life
Thursday, 18 June 2009
I have never met Alexandra Shulman, but I think I'd like her. Not, alas, because of a shared interest in haute couture (I think £49.99 is rather a lot to spend on a handbag), but because of two much more important things. The first is that as editor of the fashion bible, Vogue, she has dared to bite the hand that feeds her. But only (since no one in fashion eats anything) in a metaphorical way, of course.
Christina Patterson: Hijab and civil war in the House of Lords
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Politics is, boringly, necessarily, but at times gloriously, the art of the possible.
Christina Patterson: When old age is the time of your life
Thursday, 11 June 2009
The other day, in a house in Prague, I met an extraordinary woman. The house was the home of Alfons Mucha, the Czech artist who met Sarah Bernhardt in Paris, and whose posters for her performances made him one of the leading lights of Art Nouveau. The woman was his daughter-in-law, Geraldine. She met his son, Jiri, at a wartime party in 1941 in Leamington Spa. You can see why he fell for her. Geraldine Mucha is attractive, bright and funny. Next month, she will be 92.
Christina Patterson: Alternative therapies just don't work
Thursday, 28 May 2009
There was the man who took blood from my ear and told me to avoid aluminium saucepans. There was the couple from the Cotswolds who wired me up to a machine. There was the woman who told me to rewrite my parents' past. And then, of course, there were the herbs. Liquid herbs, powdered herbs, herbs in capsules, herbs in tinctures and the herbs that bring fear to the heart of those who have tried them, the herbs that trigger Pavlovian waves of nausea and disgust. Yup, the Chinese herbs.
Christina Patterson: Of course women can't have it all
Saturday, 23 May 2009
Helen Fielding lives in the land of gleaming gnashers and giant, plastic breasts
Christina Patterson: If you're reading it, you should be paying for it
Thursday, 21 May 2009
On Tuesday night, I sought salvation, but found only counsels of despair. "The future is ghastly," said Claire Enders, a leading analyst of the industry. And then, just in case we hadn't got the message, "the outlook is extremely bleak".
Christina Patterson: The true religion of Iran is not Islam
Saturday, 16 May 2009
How free did we feel before this hot, itchy carapace swaddled our heads?
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