Jenjie

The long fight Like her best-selling memoir, Wild Swans, Jung Chang's controversial biography Mao is banned in China, but she hopes the first Chinese translation will break through. By Maya Jaggi. During Jung Chang's childhood in Maoist China, lawns and flower gardens were destroyed as symptoms of bourgeois decadence, while Red Guards made bonfires of books. Moving to Britain as a student in 1978, Chang - briefly a Red Guard in her teens - greeted London's parks with "indescribable joy", while Nineteen-Eighty-Four made her wonder, "in a naive way, if Orwell had ever been in China. I was reading about the society I'd been living in. How did he know?" Her experience of the cultural revolution of 1966-76, when her privileges as the daughter of a high-ranking communist were curtailed after her parents' denunciation as class traitors, fuelled her memoir, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991). The family saga, encompassing the history of 20th-century China through her life and those of her mother and grandmother, drew comparisons with Dickens and Balzac, and plaudits from Martin Amis and Penelope Fitzgerald. It sold more than 10 million copies and was translated into 30 languages. Yet relatively few have read Wild Swans in mainland China, where the translation has been banned since 1994, and even pirated editions omit references to Mao. Although Chang has been free to come and go ("Wild Swans was a threat, but I was not"), mention of her is prohibited in the Chinese media, she says. The experience of her first book makes her ambitions to extend the readership of her second all the more remarkable. Mao: The Unknown Story (2005), the 800-page biography co-authored with her husband, historian Jon Halliday, is out in UK paperback this week (Vintage), and Chang has just completed a Chinese translation for publication in Hong Kong. She has no doubt it will be banned on the mainland, but is confident copies will find their way in, as with the English version on sale in Hong Kong ("they can't check every suitcase"). The biography, which, unexpectedly, took 12 years to complete, sought to "unravel the labyrinth of myths" surrounding the Mao who haunts Wild Swans. "It's certainly not a bland history; our research uncovered things far worse than anything I could imagine," Chang says in the stuccoed house in London's Notting Hill she shares with her husband. "The book reflected my shock and outrage at what Mao did to the Chinese." Among its findings is his "love for bloodthirsty thuggery [bordering] on sadism", and that his rule saw the deaths of 70 million people in peacetime. Worst for Chang was the famine of 1958-61, when "38 million people died of starvation and overwork. I had thought it was a result of economic mismanagement. But he knew many people would die because he was exporting the food they were dependent on for their survival to Russia, to buy nuclear technology to further his ambition to build China into a military superpower." The couple, who work at home on different floors, divided the research by language, with Chang tackling Chinese archives, and Halliday Russian, Albanian and others. New sources included interviews with Mao's girlfriends, doctors and bodyguards, Soviet archives opened up since 1991, and letters from Mao's second wife, Yang Kaihui, found hidden behind a roof beam ("every historian's dream"). Though Mao's inner circle had been warned off talking to the couple, the warning became an "advertisement for the prestige of the biography", says Chang. "Because the regime repressed memories, people immediately opened up." World figures were as forthcoming, from Henry Kissinger and Imelda Marcos to the former Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, whom Chang collared at a Hong Kong hotel hairdresser's. Despite reforms since Mao's death in 1976, says Chang, Deng Xiaoping ensured the communist party still derives its legitimacy from Mao. "The young are not allowed to know what life under Mao was like," she says. Last month's 30th anniversary of the end of the cultural revolution was a "non-event; the media were under strict orders not to mention it. Brainwashing still goes on, and Mao's portrait hangs in classrooms as the guiding force of the nation." That, she said at English PEN's international writers day last month, is "why the book is so dangerous, because the facts will change people's lingering ideas about Mao". The biography, Michael Yahuda wrote in these pages, exposed Mao as "one of the greatest monsters of the 20th century alongside Hitler and Stalin". Yet Chang admits it has drawn both "wonderful reviews and furious attacks". The latter range from self-proclaimed Maoists leafleting outside her talks, to Andrew Nathan, professor of political science at Columbia university, criticising the authors as "magpies - every bright piece of evidence goes in, no matter where it comes from or how reliable it is", sparking a heated exchange with them in the London Review of Books. "We never twisted the evidence; it's our accuser who was misrepresenting our sources," says Chang. She denies a charge that the book over-emphasised Mao's personality. "As a writer, I'm interested in character and Mao changed the course of history. But we show he couldn't have taken power without Stalin or the Japanese invasion." As for a desire for vengeance clouding her vision, "there's nothing wrong with Mao's victims wanting to get even, but that's not my motive", she says. "Revenge consumes a person, whereas I've wanted to enjoy life." Her mother still lives in Chengdu, in Sichuan province, but of Chang's four siblings, only her sister is in China. Her brothers - a physicist, journalist and businessman - live in Canada, London and France. She was born in 1952 in Sichuan. As a child, she has written, she would have died for Chairman Mao: "He was the idol, the God, the inspiration." But her doubts began when she was 14. "The violence and atrocities went against my nature." Her father, who refused to "sell his soul" by backing the cultural revolution, was forced from his teaching job, tortured and sent to a labour camp, where he had a mental breakdown that hastened his death in 1975. Her mother, under pressure to renounce him, was paraded in a dunce's cap, beaten and made to kneel on broken glass. Before the family was scattered to labour camps, Chang would accompany her ailing mother to "horrible denunciation meetings when she was haemorrhaging from her womb. I'd sit in a hysterical crowd that was yelling and screaming." Her grandmother died in 1969, killed, Chang believes, by the "accumulation of anguish". Yet Chang blamed only those around Mao until 1974, when she read a smuggled copy of Newsweek that described Madame Mao as her husband's "eyes and ears". She says, "it spelled out Mao's responsibility. A window opened in my mind, and light came in. I can see how powerful the brainwashing and indoctrination were; I was reasonably intelligent, but it took me eight years." It was the burning of her father's library, she thinks, that unhinged his mind. She found him weeping over a kitchen fire, stoking it with the last of his precious volumes. Yet her "entrepreneurial" 13-year-old brother salvaged for the black market thousands of Chinese and western classics that had escaped the Red Guards. Chang was able to devour Shakespeare, Shaw, RL Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle in Chinese translation, along with Turgenev and the Russian novelists who spurred the "romantic side of my nat-ure". Among Chinese writers, she felt liberated by Lu Xun, for his "enlightened humanism" in the 1920s. "He said penetrating things about the repressive nationalists, but his attacks could as well apply to the regime I was living in." Exiled to the Himalayan foothills, she worked as a barefoot doctor, steel worker and electrician, before her "rehabilitation" allowed her to study English at Sichuan university in the early 70s. Two years after Mao's death, she studied linguistics at York and was the first person from China to earn a doctorate in Britain. She taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies and wrote Wild Swans after a visit from her mother in 1988. "She talked every day for six months; I had 60 hours of tapes." Chang learned that her grandmother had been a Manchurian warlord's concubine, and her mother had joined the communist underground at 15. After her doctorate in 1982, she married a Singaporean Chinese pianist and professor at London's Royal College of Music. They split up in 1986; Halliday, whom she married in 1991, also plays the piano: "Both Jon and my previous husband introduced me to music. When I was growing up, there wasn't much, except nice tunes singing the praises of Mao." While Chang has seen a diminution of fear in China, she says, "because of its dramatic changes, it's a place full of contradictions", and publications are "under tighter control than for a century". She and Halliday were deterred from giving Mao to Wild Swans publisher HarperCollins by reports that its owner had blocked a book by Chris Patten, former governor of Hong Kong. "We knew Rupert Murdoch had a friendly relationship with Beijing, and we didn't trust him to publish Mao," she says. She is torn on the subject of western software companies colluding with China to restrict internet freedom. "If I were these companies, I'd go on doing business with China - it helps us all. But I'd try to push the line, and not do any self-censorship - or risk lives." In her introduction to a 2003 edition of Wild Swans, Chang wrote: "We were not treated by our own government as proper human beings, and consequently some outsiders did not regard us as the same kind of humans as themselves." She still feels "people don't always regard Chinese lives as being as valuable as European lives", citing a "preposterous remark" by Ken Livingstone. The mayor of London said last month: "One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot binding of women. That alone justifies the Mao Zedong era." Foot binding, Chang points out, as suffered by her grandmother, was outlawed in the early 20th century. "And nothing justifies 70 million deaths in peacetime." Once the Chinese translation of Mao is out, says Chang, "I'm putting my feet up and drawing a long breath and no doubt some inspiration." As for her next project, "I hope it won't take 12 years." http://www.guardian.co.uk

Shakespeare's First Folio fetches £2.8m The most important book in English literature was sold earlier today at Sotheby's for £2,808,000. The successful bid for a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio of plays was made by Simon Finch, a London book dealer based in Mayfair. Published only seven years after the author's death in 1623, this copy had been owned by one of the oldest libraries in Britain to be open to the public. Situated just down the road from the British Library, Dr Williams's Library specialises in non-conformist religious writings. The director of the library, Dr David Wykes, explained that the Folio was being sold to "secure the finances of the library" and to "enhance the service we offer our readers". There are about 230 copies of the First Folio extant, most of which are owned by American institutions. The copy sold today was bound in calf leather in the mid 17th-century, and contains extensive markings and annotations that shed light on its early readership. The final figure of £2.8m, including the 12% buyer's premium, was towards the bottom of the estimated range for the sale, which had been expected to raise between £2.5m and £3.5m. Peter Selley, the auctioneer in charge of the sale declared himself "delighted with the price achieved", saying it was "a great pleasure to have handled the sale of this remarkable and special copy". R. Lea http://www.guardian.co.uk

Heaney nominated for Forward poetry prize An unusually eminent figure is disclosed today as a contender for a £10,000 annual British poetry prize. He is a man who has in the past won 90 times that amount in one fell swoop. The Nobel prize laureate and grand old man of English verse, Seamus Heaney, is on the shortlist for the best collection section of the Forward poetry awards. Though the prize money is low by the Nobel's £900,000 standards, they are the country's richest poetry prizes, eagerly coveted in a field where earnings are scant. Heaney is listed for his 12th volume of poems, District and Circle. He is up against four respected established poets and a formidable newcomer, Kate Bingham, 35, whose Quicksand Beach is only her second published collection. In recent years it has been rare for artists of Heaney's rank to be associated with poetry competitions, which are generally seen as a chance for writers with less star status. But any suggestion that the Northern Irish poet is acting unfairly was dismissed yesterday by Bingham's publisher, Seren books. "Of course it's not unfair," said Seren's spokesman, Simon Hicks. "It's like saying Brazil should not enter the World Cup. Well, they did enter - and they didn't win. You can't complain because someone like Heaney publishes a book the year yours is out." The judges' chairman, the poet John Burnside, said Heaney might not even know of his entry until today. "My understanding is that it's standard for publishers to enter books without telling authors. I think it's fair. The prize isn't swayed by reputation. Big names don't necessarily make the list. If they do, it confers extra prestige on the awards." Bingham is known for writing about love with a physical vigour and relish for paradox reminiscent of 17th-century metaphysical poets such as John Donne: We didn't see monogamy / - dumb, satisfied, unsung monogamy / sneak in and slide between us on the bed, / ... disguised as love's / romantic ideal, and mocking our offhand, one / night stand bravado. Heaney writes of a blackbird: Hedge-hop, I am absolute / For you, your ready talkback, / Your each stand-offish comeback, / Your picky, nervy goldbeak - / On the grass when I arrive. Also on the best collection shortlist are Paul Farley, for Tramp in Flames; Vicki Feaver, for The Book of Blood; Robin Robertson, for Swithering; and Penelope Shuttle, for Redgrove's Wife. J. Ezard http://www.guardian.co.uk

Alex Rider: the proof that boys should be boys As Stormbreaker, the first film about children’s favourite junior spy, opens in cinemas, Amanda Craig talks to his creator, Anthony Horowitz, about adventures, kissing and growing up “I STILL REMEMBER THE tremendous exuberance of being a boy,” Anthony Horowitz, the creator of Alex Rider, says. “It has an almost abstract quality that you can’t create by artificial means.” I reflect on this as I walk round my local park every morning and see my son slay an entire Roman legion with a sword, track rabbits with a wolf and race against time to decode a complex computer virus invented by a fiendish villain bent on destroying every trace of human life. The sword is really a stick, the wolf a dog and the computer virus a last-minute piece of maths homework. But to a boy aged between 3 and 13, these are an essential part of being himself. To be a boy these days, however, is to be born under a cloud. That natural exuberance is frowned on or even medicated; children are kept indoors instead of being allowed to run free. Suddenly, however, the secret life of boys is being given much more support. The film of Horowitz’s Stormbreaker is coming to our screens, complete with death-defying car chases, jaw-dropping gadgets and enough adrenaline to boot James Bond into a bin liner. And the old-fashioned pleasures described in Conn and Hal Iggulden’s bestseller The Dangerous Book for Boys reassert such traditional pastimes as making a tree house, skinning a rabbit or peeling a thistle. “I don’t think the imaginative world of boys has changed as perhaps that of girls has,” Horowitz says. “There’s something that is just pure, abstract Boy, which hasn’t changed since the 19th century. They still like violence, slapstick humour, gadgets, and Alex Rider very much plays on that. “I deliberately don’t use slang or refer to fashionable clothes because those are so transient. I never set out to target boys, I just wrote for the boy in me.” Despite the easy allure of computers and films, books are at the heart of the secret life of boys. Like Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, Eoin Colfer, Terry Pratchett and Michelle Paver, Horowitz is popular with both sexes, but he is one of those increasingly rare children’s writers who create heroes without heroines to support or match them. This, I think, is significant. The feminist revolution has expanded the imagination and ambition of girls largely by invading the kinds of narrative that used to be reserved for boys, and boys resent it. Alex Rider gets boys back to their essential daydreams. He may not want to be a spy or a saviour, but he knows how to do all kinds of cool stuff, from martial arts to speaking three foreign languages. Unlike those of Andy McNab’s deadly serious children’s heroes, his adventures have a touch of comedy in them — such as when he breaks out of a tank with a killer jellyfish by squeezing zit cream on the metal frame. “I did dream of being a spy, and even went as far as building radio receivers out of matchboxes when I was 9 or 10,” Horowitz says. “What I’m against is wrapping children in cotton wool. Modern life is squeezing danger out of children’s lives, because parents fear a paedophile on every street corner. Where is the spirit of Shackleton?” It is rare to find the type of unambiguous, confident hero celebrated by Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Hergé or John Buchan in more modern books or films. (The Aragorn that Tolkien created in The Lord of the Rings, who never doubts his moral strength, is a very different to that in Peter Jackson’s screen version.) Yet any parents who try to ban guns will find their sons biting them out of toast. Guns, swords, lavatory humour, practical jokes and dreams of glory are hard-wired into the male sex, and the adult failure to find this endearing and funny is why so many authors do not reach boys. Until recently, children’s literature portrayed a prelapsarian age: magic depended upon not growing up, like Peter Pan. Ged, Ursula K. le Guin’s “Wizard of Earthsea”, specifically binds himself to chastity and only loses his virginity once he has lost his magic; Superman gives up his powers to have sex with Lois Lane. Comic-book heroes may love the girl next door but Spiderman and Wolverine are always prevented from doing more than kissing them; in one of the most popular Playstation games for boys, Prince of Persia, the hero fights innumerable demons only to have his beautiful princess lose all memory of her saviour at the end. In Pullman’s His Dark Materials the ability to pass into other worlds ends after Will and Lyra kiss. For boys, who take on average two years longer to reach puberty, chastity is an essential part of the fantasy life. Classic children’s novels, such as Geoffrey Trease’s Cue For Treason or C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy, often ended with the hero and heroine (sometimes disguised as a boy) marrying when they grew up, and this was as satisfying as the ending of a traditional fairytale. Today, much-loved series such as Michelle Paver’s Chronicles of Ancient Darkness which feature a boy and a girl are read with increasing anxiety by boys who realise that the nature of relationships may change. Paver’s Torak is, in one sense, a classic boys’ hero, surviving in the Stone Age with just a slate knife, a bow and a wolf — but how long before he and the girl, Renn, start behaving like Adam and Eve? It is obvious that some kind of sex is going to happen — the latest novel, Soul Eater, ends with some tantalising facts about wolf cubs — but boys do not want hero and heroine to become involved emotionally. When Harry Potter snogged first Cho Chang, then Ginny Weasley, half his fan base among the under-12s evaporated. Alex Rider does have a girl friend, Sabina Pleasure, but she is not a girlfriend. He kisses her only once, at the end of the third book before saying goodbye to her for ever. Originally, the kiss was described in some detail, but when Horowitz read the scene to his sons, then 12 and 14, they reacted so strongly against it that it was cut. They felt, he said, that although James Bond has sex, they were “ uncomfortable” about a boy their own age having such feelings. “Alex doesn’t have sex,” Horowitz says. “Sex erodes what I’m writing about, it interferes with childhood, with that total immersion of creating a world within a world.” Our sons need this world badly, and the fact that their innocence will end naturally some time during their teens does not mean that it should be brought to a deliberate halt. The success of The Dangerous Book for Boys (which includes a sensible chapter on talking to girls) has hit a nerve precisely because the secret life of boys retains all of its essential characteristics, despite having received very little encouragement over the past 20 years. “I think that a lot of authors who try to write books for boys because they think there’s big money in it have fallen flat on their faces because you can’t reinvent it if you’ve lost it. The most horrifying thing I heard at a school was that a child was allowed to read my books for pleasure because they had passed an exam.” Today’s boys may no longer want to join the scouts, but the Just William types still want to build dens in woods, dam rivers or race through the streets on their bicycles just as Alex Rider does in Stormbreaker’s most thrilling chase sequence. They want danger. The fact that many parents are too busy, or too frightened, to allow it has done most to push them into the sort of fantasy where the only action is the pressing of thumbs on console buttons — and where the heroes are bold, brave and living in a world of their own. A. Craig http://www.timesonline.co.uk

http://www.timesonline.co.uk Anybody out There? by Marian Keyes (M Joseph £16.99) is the story of a thirtysomething Dublin woman who heads off to New York where she lands a “dream job” with Candy Grrrl cosmetics. She then meets Boston boy (her dream man) and they cavort around the Big Apple being witty. But this New York reverie soon turns nightmarish with a car crash involving some severe injuries to body and soul. Keyes is the justifiable queen of chick lit, a genuine storyteller with a knack for structure and timing, even if she does make heavy use of e-mail in place of character development. She also has a sharp eye for the grimly cheerful emotional landscape of the single twenty- and thirtysomething “grrrl”. Readers who can relate to a self-consciously droll heroine in kooky outfits will no doubt be hooked by this sparky tale of love and loss. L. Atkins In Innocent Traitor (Hutchinson £12.99), the historian Alison Weir throws concrete sources aside and plunges into more murky fictional waters where motives and blame are firmly ascribed and hypothesis can rule the day. Her brave move is a success. The “innocent traitor” is Lady Jane Grey, the so-called Nine Day Queen, who was briefly enthroned by various power-hungry nobles after Henry VIII’s son Edward VI died before he could come of age. Jane’s life, starting with her disappointing first breath (she was not a boy), abused childhood, marital rape, political manipulation and violent death is a succinct reflection of the lot of the Tudor woman. Compellingly told from various points of view, this story is bolstered by fabulously gruesome historical details, from Henry VIII’s suppurating leg ulcers to Jane’s internal examination by midwives checking she is not pregnant before she is beheaded. L. Atkins

Why do I detest the regiments of Chelsea tractors with their vast metal backsides? Let me count the ways I think I’m going to hug an SUV driver. As David Cameron said of hoody-wearers this week, they need our love and understanding. Indeed these two urban tribes — the skulking teenager brimming with attitude and the tiny stressed mother encased in her monster vehicle — are manifestations of the same mindset. Both are, as Mr Cameron put it, “more defensive than offensive”, trying to stake out space, to keep the scary, maddening, overcrowded city at bay. Yet, in doing so, both physically menace the rest of us. If I take the short cut to Sainsbury’s through the flats after dark, a bunch of hoodies heading my way always makes me clutch the strap of my bag, calculate how much cash I’m carrying, where I put my keys. They dress like every South London Press photofit of a carjacker, tooled-up mugger, gang-rapist . . . For a second, I consider changing course. Then they pass and I see they’re just gormless, lunking kids, a few sizes up from my own. And the SUV drivers looming down my street at school-run hour, like some trendy tank regiment, how do I hate them? Let me count the ways. Who do they think they are, up there, looking down at the rest of us, evil bullbars at child-head height, spreading their monstrous metal backsides across two supermarket spaces? “My kids are safe,” they say. “That’s all that counts. So screw you, tin-can drivers and saddo cyclists, your kids and the whole planet too.” Such is my prejudice I never, ever let SUV drivers in at junctions. I scowl at their drivers at the lights. I’d never key their bodywork, but I might smirk if I saw a scratch. When I heard that Coldplay’s Chris Martin recently crashed his BMW X5 — a muscular, black-windowed SUV nicknamed “The Intimidator” — every fair-trade, forest-planting word he ever uttered was rendered void. And I’m far from alone. Campaigners slap spoof parking tickets on SUV windscreens headed “Poor Vehicle Choice”. The New Economics Foundation described 4x4s as “Satan’s little runarounds”. Now Ken Livingstone has announced that “Chelsea tractors” will pay £25 a day congestion charge (ordinary cars pay £8). So perhaps it’s time — as with hoodies — to examine whether this anti-SUV feeling is righteous anger or a conduit for other fears and loathings. Why, for example, is the same vitriol not directed at equally colossal people-carriers? Well, it’s hard to hate what you pity: driving a hired Ford Galaxy last summer, I’ve never felt more like a dreary, drudgy, brood-mare Mrs Mum. Or what of my own Volvo estate, which glugs down just as much fuel in the city as an average 4x4 and is so unwieldy I end up doing those embarassing seven-point turns for which female SUV drivers are so infamous. Well, Volvos are worthy, ugly, the sensible footwear of family driving. Or why does no one glower at a classic rich-boy Mercedes, whose “footprint” is larger than many 4x4s and is double the price? Well, this is discreet affluence slipstreaming past in the fast lane. SUVs represent everything most hated by the British middle classes: ostentatious wealth enjoyed by the careless rich and copied by the aspirational working class. They are bling-mobiles, flashy and meretricious. Hatred for them is wrapped up in snobbery and anti-Americanism, hence the adoption of the insult “gas guzzlers”. Only if SUV drivers have a second home do we forgive them. Pricing locals out of rural housing and commuting 300 miles every weekend is hardly green: but hanging out in Gloucestershire, dragging a horse box, denotes old money. As long as you’re not driving one just to show off . . . Worst of all, 4x4s are driven by women who — since they had careers and status before kids — now refuse to squeeze their egos into little wifey runabouts. SUVs say: “I do the mum thing, but it doesn’t define me and I still care how I look.” These same women buy those aisle-blocking off-road pushchairs: they won’t be meek or small. Their reaction to their own urban anxiety — of traffic, violence, lurking hoodies — is to hold their ground. The point is that an SUV does not congest a city any more than any other car in a beeping queue. Some models score worse in pedestrian safety tests than ordinary saloons, others about the same. Likewise their CO2 emissions: if Ken Livingstone uses the same criteria as Gordon Brown in his last Budget, boring Mondeos could pay £25 a pop, while Land Rover Freelanders go in for £8. The point is that everyone should get out of their cars, including London’s mayor who claims virtue while travelling everywhere by expense-account taxi. Yet black cabs are far too expensive to count as true public transport. Whenever I take one, whizzing down the bus lanes, I feel like a Soviet- era politician in that special lane party bosses reserved for their Zil limousines. British people make a pathetic 12 per cent of journeys on foot. Yet we condemn the road terrorist in the Terrano, while tootling our own motor down to the shops. An SUV packed with a school-run rota of kids is better for everyone than three one-child small cars. That is the way to tackle congestion: hate the car, understand the driver. http://www.timesonline.co.uk

David Stubbs tunes in to Resonance FM and wonders why more radio stations don't have shows with Finnish avant rock, pensioners selling old wigs or the sound of ice melting Its oldest presenter is a 73-year-old ex-bank robber, its youngest a 15-year-old schoolboy. Its programmes span the outer reaches of music, sound art, polemic and comedy. It has no problem with being deadly earnest and deadly funny. "My favourite Resonance moment was Stewart Lee interviewing 'the Ice Man', who melted a block of ice in the studio," recalls Resonance fan and co-creator of Father Ted, Arthur Matthews. "This took quite a while, as he wasn't allowed to use any naked flames for safety reasons. Recently I tuned in, and was greeted by a sound that was just really noise. That really is the best way to describe it - 'noise'. Obviously preferable to James Blunt." It boasts a raft of celebrity fans, including Jonathan Ross, Suggs of Madness and Janet Street-Porter, even Vic Reeves ("Resonance FM provides a vital community service - a radio station on which you can play records by Henry Cow without being looked at askance," he enthuses). Yet it represents a vast underworld of cultural activity, bustling and thriving many strata below the mainstream world of semi-hip celebdom. Resonance FM (http://www.resonancefm.com) is the sort of station you imagine the corporates and market researchers who dictate the drearily breathless glut of conventional radio programming would have snuffed out a long time ago. Its current programme director, Ed Baxter, helped set up the station in 2002, primarily to offer a much-needed outlet for experimental music, as well as to expand the idea of what radio can be, other than a medium for heavy rotation of Coldplay and selling greenhouses. Baxter rejects both the "ghastly mishmash of nostalgia and postmodern drivel" that constitutes contemporary radio, as well as the "ingrained habits" into which it's fallen. "Typically, the rhythm of a radio station is grasped in terms of its traffic reports, weather forecasts, adverts, time signals and repetitive news. But these aren't givens, and Resonance has dispensed with them." Resonance FM now broadcasts 24 hours a day and has 100,000 listeners in London, with perhaps half as many again listening worldwide via its website. It's looking to expand further, hence an appeal to update its aerial. That it has hung onto its FM status is a sign that, against all expectations, it has become a fixture of London life rather than a listener-hostile exercise in deluded cultural idealism. This is especially unlikely given the traditional and painfully hoary British mistrust of anything that smacks of "pretentiousness", a brickbat occasionally lobbed at the station. Yet, even those who find avant-garde experimentalism a tad cryptic find themselves seduced by its adventures in sound. As one listener posted on a chatboard, "there's something oddly calming about listening to 30 minutes of someone walking around Beijing market with a tape recorder, humming to themselves". Much of Resonance's output is musical, with programmes made by and for those whose passion for, and knowledge of, specialist music escapes the all-embracing net of marketing considerations and commodification. Rhythm Incursions is a celebration of the sub-atomic world of dub, hip-hop and broken beats, featuring the unjustly obscure likes of Sixtoo and DJ Flak. Music magazine the Wire's Adventures In Modern Music is a weekly showcase for the sort of music (Japanese improv, Finnish avant rock, new weird America, to label but a fraction of its scope) which will simply never cross over, which collectively represents a parallel universe of activity. Often, the presenters represent a perturbing antidote to the slick, velvet gurgle of Capital, Virgin, etc. Savage Pencil, aka Edwin Pouncey, is a case in point; his ashen, deadpan delivery makes the late John Peel sound like the still-alive Mike Reid by comparison. Yet this belies his superhuman, encyclopaedic knowledge of rock, outer rock and all points beyond. Sometimes, as befits the emphasis on enthusiasm rather than professionalism, there are odd moments of dead air which would have the average radio producer tearing their hair out and screaming for someone to insert a drum'n'bass-driven jingle or something, anything. Yet these little inadvertent glimpses into the void actually help make Resonance what it is: radio that presents an existential challenge to the listener. The "non-musical" programming of is often just as bizarre and impressive. There's Midnight Sex Talk, which recently featured a discussion on anal sex in which contributor Al Needham decried the practice among heterosexuals, coining the immortal phrase "a rooster tail of shit". This is the profane wing of Resonance to match its more sacred intentions. It's provided, too, for the surrealist tales of The Hooting Yard, whose narrative reminds of Max Ernst engravings gone Bonzo Doo-Dah: "At long last, Dr Calicagcag drew back the 14 bolts on his door... the good Doctor was wearing a rhinoceros mash of beaten bronze." There is anti-globalisation polemic, delivered by bilious American Max Kaiser, on The Truth About Markets. Meanwhile, fairly high-profile stars of comedy have pitched in. These include Stewart Lee and Arthur Matthews, who has contributed to the nature show Creature Curious "pretending to be various creatures such as anteaters", as he puts it. Julia Davis of Nighty Night and Jessica Stevenson appeared on the Clear Spot section with June Loves Janet, improvised dialogues between a brittle, psychological pair of women seeking therapy through literature and American psychobabble. Kevin Eldon, meanwhile, ubiquitous comedy sidekick to Steve Coogan, Lee & Herring and others, has performed his own series of monologues, including one delivered in a violent rehash of GCSE French. "Resonance is something to be thankful for," says Eldon. "You can tune in to hear birdsong, people hitting railings with dolls, pensioners selling old wigs, Sumatran chicken slaughtering percussion or a lecture on nipples. And that's only on a Tuesday morning. The studio is a tiny little room with a single glazed window, the sill of which is haunted by disreputable pigeons. The carpet is sort of worn into the floorboards. It's my favourite studio." Despite the diversity of its programming, its hilarity and occasional forays into the whimsical and preposterous (the summer schedule features a new series called Rock'n'Roll Fishing, in which, each week, a band such as the Young Knives go fishing with presenter Doug Whittaker), Ed Baxter is not afraid to bandy terms like art. "Radio art is what I say it is," he said recently, though he meant to convey that the station is still finding its feet in that respect. A further effort to realise this notion will be Radio Gallery, which promises to treat its one-hour slots as "exhibition space ... the broadcast is not discussion about art, it is the art". He compares Resonance with the squat culture of the 1970s and 1980s, describing it as a "lateral" phenomenon, in which people share their obsessions and enthusiasms, as opposed to a "vertical" one in which radio is a mere springboard to becoming a TV presenter or reality TV host. Resonance is, in short, a bracing, occasionally jarring but mostly jolting antidote to modern media life. As Robert Wyatt, grand old countercultural doyen and patron of Resonance, who once described his political inclination as "traitor", says, "What's extraordinary about [Resonance] is that such a sensible and entertaining use of the airwaves should be such an extraordinary thing." · Go to Resonancefm.com or 104.4FM in London http://www.guardian.co.uk

Think you know it all about Korn, System of a Down and The Cure? A new series of unauthorized biographies produced by Locomotive Records gives fans a new look at the bands they grew up with, bands that continue to dominate the modern rock charts nearly two decades or more after each formed. Steal, the biography of Korn, Dehumanize, the biography of System of a Down, and Lost in the Labyrinth, the biography of The Cure, include more than 40 minutes of interviews with the bands, exclusive film footage and ruminations on the musicians by those who know them best. Don't get too excited. You can't have your cake and eat it too, especially when the DVD documentaries are not authorized by the bands or their record labels. Thus, you won't hear any original music from the Korn, System of a Down or The Cure on the biographies. The soundtrack for each is not bad, but not something one would expect to hear on a biography from three bands that, in their own unique way, helped forge new paths for rock musicians in their wake. The one thing that almost makes each DVD unbearable is the snotty, British narrator who incessantly drops hate on American culture - "Churches are more popular than burger bars. And, in America, that's saying something," she spews on the unauthorized biography of Korn. The line is part of a detailed description of Bakersfield, Calif., where the rap-rock quintet - recently reduced to a quartet in 2005 when guitarist Brian "Head" Johnson left the band after discovering Christianity - grew up, formed and launched its historic career. The narrator's arrogant ramblings initially scrape at hypersensitive nerves like a cinder block slid down an exposed shin - excruciatingly painful and pointless. Still, she eventually fades into the soundtrack, drowned out by informative interviews with individual band members and behind-the-scenes footage that grants fans a better understanding of the groups and music they have grown to know and love. Korn, System of a Down and The Cure are not the only three bands receiving this unwarranted exposure. Others on tap scheduled for release in coming months include Bon Jovi, Dave Matthews Band, Madonna, Coldplay, Nickelback, The Strokes, The White Stripes and Slipknot. Previous unauthorized biographies released by Spain-based Locomotive Records included retrospectives on Metallica, Green Day, U2 and Eminem. Those releases and the ones on tap for 2006 are fodder for fans who just can't get enough of their favorite bands. For those of you with a casual interest in any of these groups, do yourself a real favor. Keep your wallet in your pocket. Borrow the discs from a friend. http://www.theadvertiser.com

Coldplay uses name for cause Coldplay doesn’t want to impose their political beliefs on others, says frontman Chris Martin, but band members feel an obligation to use their celebrity for a good cause. Coldplay supports Oxfam’s fair trade campaign, which lobbies against trade policies that hurt developing countries, such as the influx of goods from developed countries. “We don’t want to be preachy, we just say those words (fair trade), and make sure people look it up themselves,” Martin said at a news conference ahead of a concert Thursday. He said the British rock band wants to put their name recognition to good use. He also said the band dislikes their debut album, “Parachutes,” which was released in 2000. “We know that’s terrible music, and we always try to think about what we can do next,” Martin said. He declined to say when their next album will be released, but said it definitely won’t be this year. http://www.nashuatelegraph.com

Coldplay singer Chris Martin lives the life of a poor fan so his resulting bad mood inspires an even better performance. The husband of Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow claims he often travels to gigs on public transport and queues up for “over-priced hot-dogs” (hang on – isn’t he supposed to be a veggie?) to keep in touch with the plebs on the street. It is this slum-life that keeps the righteous frontman’s performances razor-sharp... apparently. He tells the Daily Mirror, “I try getting to shows at the same time as everyone else. I've been stuck in traffic, I've been on an over-crowded train and I've lined up to buy an overpriced hot-dog. Quite often this will put me in a bad mood. So I know just what it's like for everyone else who is paying. "It makes me more determined to get on-stage and really deliver a show that makes it all worthwhile for everyone." http://www.gigwise.com

Crikey!! Not much light reading in there! There's plenty of authors on there who i intend reading at some point but I don't think I've read many yet. These are on my list: Faust - Goethe Last of the Mohicans - Cooper (Seen the film, bought the book but not got round to reading it yet) Charles Dickens: I've read half of Great Expectations and thoroughly enjoyed what I did read. I put it down to go on holiday and never picked it up again. Will be re-reading at some point

next episode is very good. its starting to go all Lord of the Flies

not read any Graham Greene. have this on my list of books to read at some point before I die. End of the Affair - I think the film is pretty cool. would like to read the book, because 9 times out of 10 the book is always better than the film. Which other authors were on your list?

Da Vinci Code 6.5/10 Was an alright film. the book was a million times better. the film didn't seem to have the same pace or the same sexual tension. i did like the way they created some of the scenes, they gave a picture to some of the bits that I couldn't visualise

i know!! it was that E4 episode which really highlighted the hoodie thing for me. and where were the next week on Lost spoilers?????

Just My Luck 6/10 Had the promise to be a good film but the storyline ended up a little too far-fetched, and who on earth decided to put McFly in there!??!!?!!

me too!! and why've they got Charlie in a hoodie? every time he does something that could conceivably be bad he puts his hood up!!! he's surely not a scally????

I think that's what bugged me most. The rest of the tournament was riddled with cheating and outrageous behaviour, yet the final was going really well. It was exciting, and there was some brilliant football being played. then in seconds it all descended into farce because one player, who with all his experience ought to know a hell of a lot better, decided to act like a thug.

I get fed up with people sometimes. turn round and do that and I'd be arrested for abh at the very least

What the hell did Zidane think he was doing???? That was so dangerous! Just an inch on the wrong direction and he could have killed the italian. The final was going so well up until that point. A few dives but nothing like what we've seen previously.

That'll be because he isn't dead!!! There's at least one more film to come, so they won't have killed off their most popular character.

definitely agree with that one!

thats cool!!

wish I'd known!!! will have to wait for it next time i go to see it

Nope, the reason the UK carries on with business as usual is because we've put up with the terrorist threat for years. With the threat of the IRA bombers, and all the actual attacks carried out, we got used to a certain way of living. If anything, we've reverted back to the way we used to live before the last major bomb on this island which was the Manchester bomb in 1996. We spent around 20 years knowing that any time we went into a major city we could be subject to a bomb or evacuated due to a hoax.