Max Salsbury

picture of Max Salsbury

Max has aged ever since the day he was born; the signs of wear now beginning to usurp his remarkable good looks. A failed pragmatist, he now relies on a vast structure of guesswork to feel his way through life, this model often leading to trouble with other humans, not least of all the police. Like Socrates without the thoughts, Max can spend hours staring out of windows at distant objects. Free of the shackles of education, experience, responsibility and sense, he wallows daily in a morass of dented egoism and febrile illusion. When he grows up he has high plans to become a bigamist, which he insists is the ‘only way to be sure’, though this is probably just an attempt at humour. His favourite tree is the oak; his favourite bird is the tit.

Loopy Archbishop Stirs It Up

Dr Rowan Williams’ barmy comments on the potential implementation of sharia law in the British Isles strike me as perhaps one last throw of the dice for a silly old man who is watching helpless as religion (especially his own) is being eroded.
On his inauguration, the Archbishop was presented as a funky modernist, in stark […]

February 8th, 2008 by Max Salsbury

Excusing Extremism

The writer Martin Amis has recently become embroiled in a minor tangle over some ideas he posited about Muslim fundamentalism. He stated the following during an interview for The Times in 2006:
What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There’s a definite urge - don’t you have it? - to say, […]

October 24th, 2007 by Max Salsbury

A Nuclear Iran?

President Ahmadinejad trotted out exactly what would be expected of him during his uneventful chat with Jon Snow last week: Iran isn’t slightly interested in producing an atomic bomb; Iran is a nation of peace; Iran loves all countries and peoples; Iran is certainly not arming any of Iraq’s militias. All standard stuff, but he […]

September 24th, 2007 by Max Salsbury

Warming to Global Warming

The sun came back today. It’s now 9pm and the sky still has a tint of the fading azure. How unusual.
The windows are open. I’m listening to music. Everything’s ok. It suddenly occurs to me that I’ve been really miserable for the past 3 months. Suddenly I’m remembering what happiness feels like.
Now I’m beginning […]

August 24th, 2007 by Max Salsbury

Smoked out

Smoking is ruined. It’s been over a month since the government reached out and tossed us happy smoke fans into the fierce and gloomy night forever, like Hitler’s bodyguards forced to puff under the falling Soviet ordnance in the bunker’s garden. It is quite possibly the most infuriating edict I have ever had the misfortune […]

August 9th, 2007 by Max Salsbury