From Yan Liang: Q & A with Norwegian Wood director Tran Anh Hung

"I am a guy who is Vietnamese, living in France, making a Japanese movie. But Vietnamese culture is really deep inside me. Let’s say I enjoy watching Vietnamese women more than others. It’s something like that. I feel that I am a different man when I am in Vietnam compared with France. I feel that I’m not living my life fully in France, I feel as though my life is in suspension. It is not something I dislike, that’s just how it is."

Doug Gibson's Stories about Storytellers, reviewed by Linda Leith

My review of Doug Gibson's Stories about Storytellers has just appeared on the Globe Books site and no doubt in the paper tomorrow.

Of Shakespeare, Anonymous, and Muriel Spark

"Shakespeare is – let us put it this way – the least English of English writers. The typical quality of the English is understatement, saying a little less than what you see. In contrast, Shakespeare tended toward the hyperbolic metaphor, and it would come to us as no surprise to learn that Shakespeare had been Italian, or Jewish, for instance." -- Jorge Luis Borges 1979

The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London.

Free Money -- Part II

And here's Part II of the Free Money panel.