Xan Brooks
@xanbrooks.bsky.social
Novelist, journalist. THE CATCHERS (https://tinyurl.com/TheCatchers2024)
Martin Parr, gone far too soon. I interviewed him a few years back, just after lockdown when he was undergoing chemo & he was sharp & combative & relishing his new role as a disabled photographer, a mobility-scooting drive-by shooter amid the British crowds. RIP.
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
‘I didn’t really watch any tennis’: how Martin Parr captured the Grand Slam’s real champions
The photographer toured the four tournaments shooting thrilled fans instead of sweaty stars. He talks about why street photography is becoming impossible – and life after his cancer diagnosis
www.theguardian.com
December 7, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Martin Parr, gone far too soon. I interviewed him a few years back, just after lockdown when he was undergoing chemo & he was sharp & combative & relishing his new role as a disabled photographer, a mobility-scooting drive-by shooter amid the British crowds. RIP.
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
Train Dreams is a stone cold masterpiece - one of the century’s great books www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/m...
The Dark Secrets of the Writer Behind ‘Train Dreams’
www.nytimes.com
December 2, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Train Dreams is a stone cold masterpiece - one of the century’s great books www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/m...
At some point soon a journalist is going to lose patience & react as one would normally react when a bullying moron tries to shout you down - & they'll deserve every Pulitzer prize they can carry
“You’re a stupid person” — Trump lashes out at a reporter who presses him on the fact that the suspected DC shooter was actually thoroughly vetted before he was let in the US from Afghanistan
November 28, 2025 at 9:10 AM
At some point soon a journalist is going to lose patience & react as one would normally react when a bullying moron tries to shout you down - & they'll deserve every Pulitzer prize they can carry
I hesitate to bill this as an interview given that it basically involved sitting on a couch, listening to Hawke & Linklater chat & occasionally pitching in. But I wrote it up afterwards, so that officially counts as work www.theguardian.com/film/2025/no...
‘Our underachieving careers make the friendship easier’: Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on Blue Moon and their 32-year friendship
As they launch their 10th film together, the actor and director look back on how their stellar careers have progressed in tandem, through co-stars’ addictions and Hollywood pressures
www.theguardian.com
November 28, 2025 at 7:41 AM
I hesitate to bill this as an interview given that it basically involved sitting on a couch, listening to Hawke & Linklater chat & occasionally pitching in. But I wrote it up afterwards, so that officially counts as work www.theguardian.com/film/2025/no...
Sublime character actor who landed in a film like a pinch of peyote & made everything weirder, hazardous, better. RIP www.vulture.com/article/cult...
Cult Actor Udo Kier Dies at 81
Kier worked with everyone — from Andy Warhol to Gus Van Sant to Madonna.
www.vulture.com
November 24, 2025 at 7:55 AM
Sublime character actor who landed in a film like a pinch of peyote & made everything weirder, hazardous, better. RIP www.vulture.com/article/cult...
Spoke with Joel Edgerton & Clint Bentley about their fabulous Train Dreams, & the pleasures & pain of a life on the road
www.theguardian.com/film/2025/no...
www.theguardian.com/film/2025/no...
‘Studio bosses were like: it sounds lovely. We’ll pass!’: Joel Edgerton and Clint Bentley on their Oscar-tipped lumberjack tragedy
The actor and the director of Train Dreams – a quietly powerful tale of a logger in 1900s Idaho – on the slog of getting it made, the joy of motel living and why human-made things will always beat AI
www.theguardian.com
November 14, 2025 at 7:56 AM
Spoke with Joel Edgerton & Clint Bentley about their fabulous Train Dreams, & the pleasures & pain of a life on the road
www.theguardian.com/film/2025/no...
www.theguardian.com/film/2025/no...
Delighted by this; it's a book that sticks around.
Right alongside Denis Johnson, too, for the added real estate value
Right alongside Denis Johnson, too, for the added real estate value
November 11, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Delighted by this; it's a book that sticks around.
Right alongside Denis Johnson, too, for the added real estate value
Right alongside Denis Johnson, too, for the added real estate value
Reposted by Xan Brooks
Whole fucking thing makes me sick to my stomach. An abject fucking liar, a man who lies as easily as he fucking breathes, threatening an organisation which strives for truthfulness. And plastic patriots like the Mail and Farage urging him on. Jackels.
November 11, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Whole fucking thing makes me sick to my stomach. An abject fucking liar, a man who lies as easily as he fucking breathes, threatening an organisation which strives for truthfulness. And plastic patriots like the Mail and Farage urging him on. Jackels.
By this logic, can the BBC now countersue Karoline Leavitt for labelling its output as “100% fake news”? Have her stand that up in court, with evidence, or the White House pays a billion in damages www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/w...
Trump Threatens to Sue the BBC for $1 Billion After Jan. 6 Documentary
www.nytimes.com
November 10, 2025 at 6:03 PM
By this logic, can the BBC now countersue Karoline Leavitt for labelling its output as “100% fake news”? Have her stand that up in court, with evidence, or the White House pays a billion in damages www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/w...
Waking up to wall-to-wall news of the BBC mugging & the Democrat collapse (8 turncoats, but that's all it takes) & it feels somehow seismic, a battle lost on two crucial fronts. 2025, what a year, constant cowardice & capitulation.
November 10, 2025 at 8:35 AM
Waking up to wall-to-wall news of the BBC mugging & the Democrat collapse (8 turncoats, but that's all it takes) & it feels somehow seismic, a battle lost on two crucial fronts. 2025, what a year, constant cowardice & capitulation.
For @the-independent.com, on the self-admiring Jay Kelly & the constellation of stars who like to orbit themselves www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
George Clooney basically plays himself in Jay Kelly – so why is he so unconvincing?
Noah Baumbach’s new film casts Clooney as a wealthy, handsome, pampered and indulged A-lister, and like many films in which fake stars opine about the miseries of celebrity, it quickly wears out its w...
www.independent.co.uk
November 10, 2025 at 7:47 AM
For @the-independent.com, on the self-admiring Jay Kelly & the constellation of stars who like to orbit themselves www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
I love to hear about the genesis of novels. The solitary seed that was planted years before it flowered. The seemingly random schmutter of ideas that slowly come together & spark
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...
‘I had a year to write it from scratch’: the 2025 Booker finalists on the stories behind their novels
A newspaper report about a missing girl, the memory of a midwinter emergency … Susan Choi, Andrew Miller, David Szalay and others on what inspired their shortlisted books
www.theguardian.com
November 8, 2025 at 10:53 AM
I love to hear about the genesis of novels. The solitary seed that was planted years before it flowered. The seemingly random schmutter of ideas that slowly come together & spark
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...
Jennifer Lawrence Oscar campaign up & running
November 3, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Jennifer Lawrence Oscar campaign up & running
Reposted by Xan Brooks
This week's @the-independent.com column: on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, that magnificent, swaggering, unreconstructed giant of 70s American cinema
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at 50: Unruly, boneheaded, and still a classic
Rejected by most major studios at the time and certainly not expected to win multiple Oscars and place second only to ‘Jaws’ in the biggest films of 1975, Milos Forman’s barbed mental hospital tale re...
www.independent.co.uk
October 13, 2025 at 7:28 AM
This week's @the-independent.com column: on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, that magnificent, swaggering, unreconstructed giant of 70s American cinema
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
Good, stringent piece, Hannah Jane Parkinson taking no prisoners here (as opposed to Saudi, which takes literally thousands)
www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/o...
www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/o...
‘Amoral, evil’: vitriolic backlash builds against comics who played Riyadh festival
Murder by bone-saw, lashings for rape victims, punishment amputation, jail for satirists … these are the Saudi human rights abuses fuelling the fury being directed at the likes of Louis CK, Dave Chapp...
www.theguardian.com
October 9, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Good, stringent piece, Hannah Jane Parkinson taking no prisoners here (as opposed to Saudi, which takes literally thousands)
www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/o...
www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/o...
40 years old this week. One of those rare life-changing albums when I first heard it at 16; the whole wild world kicking in the front door. ‘We sail tonight for Singapore …’
October 4, 2025 at 11:51 AM
40 years old this week. One of those rare life-changing albums when I first heard it at 16; the whole wild world kicking in the front door. ‘We sail tonight for Singapore …’
The one trait shared by all the worst people I’ve ever worked with was their habit of brazenly framing their disasters as triumphs.
Absolutely bizarre. Trump takes credit for a judge blocking HIS OWN PLAN to cut $34 million in funding for counterterrorism in New York.
October 3, 2025 at 5:39 PM
The one trait shared by all the worst people I’ve ever worked with was their habit of brazenly framing their disasters as triumphs.
Thomas Pynchon's Shadow Ticket. An antic noir adventure that plays like a postmodern Tintin story. A portrait of 1930s fascism that reminds us a little of now www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...
Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon review – his first novel in 12 years tunes into rising fascism in the US
The 88-year-old’s jaunty whodunnit, set during the prohibition era, features clowns, Nazis and a missing cheese heiress
www.theguardian.com
September 30, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Thomas Pynchon's Shadow Ticket. An antic noir adventure that plays like a postmodern Tintin story. A portrait of 1930s fascism that reminds us a little of now www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...
This is an excellent, clarifying article that points out pretty starkly where we are all standing right now
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Extreme weather and extreme politics go hand in hand – Trump and Musk are pushing both
Rabble-rousing of far-right demagogues is a reminder that the battle for a fair and habitable planet cannot be fought alone
www.theguardian.com
September 26, 2025 at 10:14 AM
This is an excellent, clarifying article that points out pretty starkly where we are all standing right now
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Claudia Cardinale: the only actor to star in three of Sight & Sound's 100 best films of all time, but who also played the princess in The Pink Panther, destoyer & rebuilder of adolescents the world over. The cause of & cure for all our problems. No better legacy. RIP
a woman in a pink sweater is talking on a telephone
ALT: a woman in a pink sweater is talking on a telephone
media.tenor.com
September 23, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Claudia Cardinale: the only actor to star in three of Sight & Sound's 100 best films of all time, but who also played the princess in The Pink Panther, destoyer & rebuilder of adolescents the world over. The cause of & cure for all our problems. No better legacy. RIP
Birds, Strangers & Psychos, an anthology of Hitchock-inspired short stories, is the Times's "thriller of the month". We're launching it at the BFI Southbank, 6.30pm next Monday. Drop by if you're free, or need a place to lie low. Still some vacancies. All mod cons
whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...
whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...
September 22, 2025 at 2:20 PM
Birds, Strangers & Psychos, an anthology of Hitchock-inspired short stories, is the Times's "thriller of the month". We're launching it at the BFI Southbank, 6.30pm next Monday. Drop by if you're free, or need a place to lie low. Still some vacancies. All mod cons
whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...
whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...
Hell is other people, specifically these people www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/w...
Behind Castle Walls, the Rich and Powerful Celebrate Trump
www.nytimes.com
September 18, 2025 at 7:12 AM
Hell is other people, specifically these people www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/w...
Loved PTA’s One Battle After Another for its sheer antic, rolling lawlessness. It’s the red-state blue-state 21stC Pudd’nhead Wilson father-daughter coming-of-age comedy-horror mashup the world (& specifically America) needs right now
September 17, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Loved PTA’s One Battle After Another for its sheer antic, rolling lawlessness. It’s the red-state blue-state 21stC Pudd’nhead Wilson father-daughter coming-of-age comedy-horror mashup the world (& specifically America) needs right now