August 8th, 2010
England’s green and prejudiced land
When David James Smith’s family moved from London to a quiet Sussex town, the BNP neighbour came as a shock. Yet it was smaller, subtle incidents that dented his faith that his mixed-race children would be treated as equals. His account is a powerful, personal journey into living with racism.
Lewes is a genteel town for liberals and libertarians on the edge of the South Downs, so it was quite a surprise to dis- cover that we had been living next door to a neo- Nazi for a year, when we first moved there in the summer of 2005.
read it at www.sundaytimes.co.uk
July 11th, 2010
Who killed Bambi?
Twenty-five years ago Jeremy Bamber was jailed for life for murdering his family. In his first face-to-face prison interview, he discloses disturbing new evidence
Tuesday was not a normal day for ordinary visitors, so the visiting room at HMP Full Sutton, a high-security prison just outside York, was deserted as the door opened at the far end of the room and a lone prisoner entered. I had been offered any seat in the house, but had already decided we would sit in the private conference room just off the main area, with the low table and the chairs – all bolted to the floor.
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May 23rd, 2010
Stitch Bitch
…was Alexander McQueen’s nickname for himself, but his self-deprecation hid a deeper despair. Now his best friends reveal how the fabric of the designer’s life unravelled. By David James Smith
Shaun describes the phone call that came on a Thursday in February, four months ago, as a moment he will never forget, and a moment he hopes never to repeat – even though, in a weird and not unconnected chain of events, it was a repeat of a moment from three years earlier.
read online at The Times website
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January 31, 2010
It’s murder every day in the Old Bailey
Gang violence, terrorism, honour killings… it’s all in a day’s work at the Old Bailey. We’re given unprecedented access to the hallowed halls of the criminal courts.
There is a place in my heart for the Old Bailey. One afternoon, 18 years ago, I went along to the Central Criminal Court and took a seat at random. I thought I was going to research a satirical drama about the judiciary, and I suppose I was hoping to hear a judge comment on the fragrance of a Tory wife or ask who the Beatles were. Instead, I found a well-off teenager in the dock alongside a wild, older Glaswegian. Together, as I discovered that afternoon, they had got drunk, taken drugs, tormented and finally killed a vulnerable local man in his own flat. The middle-class youngster described how he had pressed his palms against the wall for leverage as he had jumped up and down on his victim’s prostrate body. He recalled how he had listened to the sound of the ribs cracking…
read online at The Times website
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