The latest Madness of Crowds column is here:

Broadstairs, the Isle of Thanet, a frowsty sort of an evening in early August, with shadows forming within shadows down the high street – a run of chip shops, chain stores and charity shops that steepens into a ski jump, which threatens to tip you off the dirty-white crescent of cliff surrounding Viking Bay. The consensus following a wholesome chicken dinner was that we should promenade and observe the morris dancers parading through the town; after all, who but a callow sophisticate could fail to appreciate this ancient rite, with its pagan roots buried deep in the loam of old Albion?

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Some forthcoming tour dates with Will Self talking about Walking to Hollywood:

September 7 at the Ropetackle Arts Centre in Shoreham, West Sussex. Details here.

September 9 at the SW11 festival in London. Details here.

September 13 at Arnolfini, Bristol. Details here.

September 14 at Topping books in Bath. Details here.

October 12 at the Morley literature festival. Details here.

More to follow …

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Will Self has written a big piece for the Guardian’s Review section, published tomorrow, writing about his preoccupation with scale, tracing his interest in it from his short story Scale through to his new book, Walking to Hollywood. Read the article here.

Journalism, The Guardian, Walking to Hollywood | No Comments »

The theatre company Invisible Dot has used telephone boxes at the Edinburgh festival where you can hear a choice of nine short stories, one of which is Will Self reading The Minor Character.

Will Self is going to be talking with the Shetland-based author and school teacher Donald S Murray at the Edinburgh book festival on August 30 at 8.30pm. The discussion is entitled “Fresh perspectives on St Kilda on the 80th Anniversary of the Evacuation”. Details here.

Self will also be giving a lecture about scale in relation to art at the National Galleries of Scotland on Friday August 27. Details here. For details of Self’s other appearances at the festival, go here.

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Will Self in conversation with Martin Rowson on the subject of the Power of the Political Cartoon at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce here.

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There’s an edited version of an interview with Will Self in Creative Review here.

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The latest Real Meals column from the New Statesman is here:

Did kidult culture spawn kidult restaurants, or was it perhaps the other way round? Certainly, the concentrated ambience of senile juvenescence that saturates establishments such as the Hard Rock Café, Planet Hollywood and TGI Friday’s makes them a suitable vanguard of the kidult revolution. I blame the Sixties. Between the door of TGI Friday’s – beside which stood a life-size model of the Iron Man (although, on reflection, is it possible for a fictional superhero to be “life-size”?) – and our table, the waiting captain challenged us with the phrase “All right, guys?” no fewer than four times, as if we were being subjected to a kidult interrogation.

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Will Self is going to be at Bookslam in London on Wednesday September 1. For more details and tickets, visit their website here.

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Will Self will once again be appearing at the Ilkley literature festival on Monday October 11 at 7.30pm at the Kings Hall to talk about his latest book, Walking to Hollywood. Tickets go on sale on August 31.

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It’s now possible to listen to Will Self’s Sebald lecture from January this year at the British Centre for Literary Translation website.

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