An anthology of Mike Marqusee's selected articles discussing Bob Dylan, the game of cricket, American Civil rights, Jewish identity, William Blake’s art, nationalism, Big Pharma, Labour Party politics, the films of John Ford, Flamenco music, the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, the BDS campaign, Muhammad Ali and Italian Renaissance painting amongst many other topics explored with Marqusee's acute, erude and kaleidoscopic writings.
Apr 16, 2004
The Hindu, 16 April, 2004 The India-Pakistan series has been nearly everything a committed neutral could ask for. There have been no dead matches and no inflammatory incidents. For the most part, the contest has been closely fought and unpredictable, enriched by a succession of gritty individual performances. In the Test matches we’ve been able to savour… Read more
Apr 8, 2004
The Guardian, 8 April Forty years ago, his motto was “Money doesn’t talk, it swears …” Today, it’s “stretch-lined demi-bra with lace”. After four decades in showbusiness, Bob Dylan has made his debut in a television commercial – promoting a new line of lingerie. The advert, screening this week in the US, intercuts close-ups of… Read more
Apr 1, 2004
Mike Marqusee talks to novelist David Peace Red Pepper, April 2004 What does the left want from its artists? To be told what we already know? To have our sense of mission confirmed, to be reassured that our struggles will be vindicated? Or to have our assumptions and emotional habits challenged and our perceptions altered?… Read more
Mar 14, 2004
India Today – ITPlus, March 2004 I’m grateful to cricket for many things, and one of them is that it got me to Pakistan – with its sufi shrines and elaborately painted trucks, its virtuoso kite flyers and zesty kebabs. The most rewarding travelling combines the purposeful and the aimless. Following a cricket tour in… Read more
Mar 12, 2004
India Today, Special Issue, March 2004 There are all sorts of reasons why I’ll be approaching the India-Pakistan series as a deeply committed neutral. I grew up in New York, moved to England where I became a cricket lover, and later travelled (as often and as widely as I could) in India and Pakistan. I… Read more
Mar 10, 2004
India’s first cricket tour of Pakistan in 15 years brings political opportunity and danger in equal measure The Guardian, 10 March, 2004 India’s superstar cricketers – among the country’s most famous faces – will today visit Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at his Delhi residence, to receive his official blessing before boarding a chartered flight… Read more
Feb 25, 2004
Indian Express, February 2004 For some years now, the absence of India-Pakistan cricket has been the hole in the heart of the world game. It deprives cricket-livers of an attractive, exciting fixture and it undermines the sub-continent’s claim to be the game’s progressive new power house. More importantly, it is a constant reminder of the… Read more
Jan 18, 2004
Five poems selected for Biscuit 2003 prize anthology (The Sensitively Thin Bill of the Shag, Biscuit 2003). Aesthetic Spare me the wallet-thumpers and mickey-takers, spare me the shyness of men in suits, spare me the tears of movers and shakers, spare me the hollow sound of flutes. Give me something boisterous, something bohemian something potable –… Read more
Dec 18, 2003
The Guardian, 18 December 2003 This time last year British fans starved of victory on the field could console themselves with the thought that they enjoyed superiority in at least one corner of the sporting realm. While manifestations of race hate had mostly vanished from British arenas, they were flaring up with increasing violence across… Read more
Nov 1, 2003
Red Pepper, November, 2003 Forty years ago, on 26 October 1963, Bob Dylan premiered ‘The Times They are A-Changin’’, his generational anthem, to a sold-out house at New York’s Carnegie Hall. The song is founded on a conviction that the movement for social change is unstoppable, that history will conform to morality. In its second… Read more
