Six of the Best 870

Nicole Goodkind reports on the scandal of Trump's El Paso detention camp for children: "'In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,' said Holly Cooper, co-director of the University of California, Davis' Immigration Law Clinic."

Back in 2016, Ylan Q. Mui examined the tangled subject of Boris Johnson's US citizenship and tax liabilities there.

Working for Jeremy Hunt was the worst three years of my life, says Luke Turner.

Lee Brackstone mourns the early death of Gordon Burn, who would have given us "another half-dozen books that may have helped us understand the present moment: the unravelling of celebrity culture, which was always Gordon's lodestar subject".

Tim Worthington nominates 12 radio programmes that deserve to be given a proper release.

Natalie Simpson tells us how not to walk the Cumbria Way.

Alma Cogan by Gordon Burn on the Backlisted podcast

I once blogged:

I am reminded of a couple of novels by Gordon Burn - Alma Cogan and Fullalove - which explored the unhealthy brew of child murder and celebrity that fuels the tabloid press in Britain. You could do worse than read them if you want to understand the times we live in.

Burn's Alma Cogan is the subject, after a detour via Nikolaus Pevsner and Kazuo Ishiguro, of the latest edition of the Backlisted podcast. 

It was recorded live at the Durham Book Festival.

Madeleine McCann and the way we live now

Rod Liddle has an article in the Spectator tomorrow that expresses my own views on the case:

The McCanns, having discovered that Madeleine was missing, did what they were meant to do these days and flung themselves bodily upon the massed media; they performed, they posed with that cuddly toy of Madeleine’s, they embraced the brouhaha: they did what was expected of them. If Madeleine had been found within 72 hours all would have been fine; but the media, especially the English media, always end up loathing what they have created — an essential part of the self-disgust intrinsic to any tabloid journalist.

They grow bored, they look for the new angle. They treated the McCanns — and especially foxy, photogenic, middle-class GP Kate — much as they might a slightly exotic contestant on Big Brother. Her class and apparent composure demanded immediate respect — and then later suspicion and derision. It’s the usual thing: one moment she’s up, the next moment she’s down.

I am reminded of a couple of novels by Gordon Burn - Alma Cogan and Fullalove - which explored the unhealthy brew of child murder and celebrity that fuels the tabloid press in Britain. You could do worse than read them if you want to understand the times we live in.