Kester Brewin

Having been urged by lots of After Magic readers to go and see Iron Man 3, I saw it last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. The series has always had more biting wit that similar franchises, and has done well combining that with some thoughtful content too. I don’t want to talk much about the [...]

A good friend Jonny spent a week or so in silence in the hills of Wales recently, and has been blogging really beautifully about the experience. The term I don’t like that’s often used for these periods is ‘retreat’ – it’s too military for me, and carries with it a sense of moving backwards. Though [...]

Interesting piece here exploring the fact that today ‘Please Please Me’ – the hit that really made the band famous – has gone into the public domain, as its 50 year copyright period has expired. The article takes the view that this is a tragedy, one that leaves The Beatles’ music open to exploitation. Anything [...]

If you follow my Twitter at all you may have picked up that I went to see the latest (and last) Christopher Nolan installment of the Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. You may also have picked up that I found the film problematic, partly in terms of the plot – which seemed over-convoluted and lacking true [...]

Had a question come in via Twitter the other day, asking why pirates have traditionally been depicted as having parrots on their shoulders, so thought I’d post some quick thoughts… Truth be told, there is little evidence that lots of pirates did have parrots perched on them – the image appears to have begun with [...]

Driving back from Suffolk yesterday I had on a podcast from Radiolab, which took the subject of ‘colour’ as a launchpad into various pieces. One of them was the fascinating idea of tetra-chromatics, women (and can only be women) who are born with 4 different receptor cones in their eyes – Red, Blue, Green…and Yellow. [...]

One of the issues that people have immediately jumped on when I have told them I’m writing about piracy is the thorny issue of pirated music. I know quite a few people who make a living from recording music, and clearly this is a big issue for them because it gets to the heart of [...]

“Cancer takes so much, it’s ruthless, however there are some things it can’t touch. It can’t take how you feel about someone; it can’t steal what has already been written…” Seems that copies of Mutiny! are arriving and people are getting stuck in, which is brilliant. Can’t wait to hear how people have found it…though, [...]

Nick Hornby’s column ‘Stuff I’ve Been Reading‘ in the McSweeney’s writing mag The Believer is always the thing I turn to first, and this month’s (well, March/April – but it has to be rowed across the Atlantic in a bath tub, it seems) is one of the best for ages. He is ostensibly writing about [...]