A. A. Gill's writing: an embarrassment of riches. This latest selection sees him at his most perceptive, brilliant and funny. His subjects range from the controversial - fur - to the heartfelt - a fantastic crystallisation of what it means to be European. He tackles life drawing, designs his own tweed and spends a day at Donald Trump's university. His award-winningly acerbic review of Morrissey's autobiography sits alongside the insight he brings to the work of Rudyard Kipling, Don McCullin and P. G. Wodehouse. And he turns that insight on himself in the terrific article 'Life at Sixty'.
There are pieces from all corners of the world: from the tragic and terrifying Triangle of Death in the Congo to the dangers of the Mexican migrant journey. He has adventures with porcupine pluckers in Botswana and returns to his roots in Scotland. He forages for bush tucker in Australia and for high culture in Ravenna. He reports from the roof of the world in Bhutan, and the rather more earthbound drunk tanks of Humberside. He meets the stateless - the Muslim Rohingyas exiled from Burma; and the homeless in a moving and humane account of a shelter in central London.
A recurring theme emerges in the overwhelming story of our times: the refugee crisis. In the last few years A. A. Gill has given us both its human face and its appalling context. He has travelled to Lampedusa to meet the Africans desperately trying to reach Europe, visited the Calais Jungle as well as Syrian refugees in the Lebanon, and met the migrants on the vast and hazardous journey from Kos through the Balkans. The resulting articles are journalism at its finest and fiercest.
