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The Guardian
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Why can't you catch a train or tram to Sydney's beaches – and are we dreamin' to think new rail lines could be built?
Michael Caton enjoys living a short walk from Sydney's Bondi beach, but when the actor needs to venture into the heart of the city for an appointment, he knows to never schedule anything before late morning, well after peak hour. 'You wouldn't dream of taking the bus in the morning,' the 82-year-old says on speaker phone while taking his Toyota RAV4 for a drive. 'They're all full. They just don't really do the job.' When it comes to telling Australians about dreams, Caton has form, of course. His character Darryl Kerrigan in the classic film The Castle coined the catchphrase 'tell him he's dreamin''. Caton also fronted a 1998 campaign by Bondi locals opposed to a controversial plan to extend Sydney's Eastern Suburbs railway line from Bondi Junction to the beach. 'It will be the end of the line for Bondi,' Caton proclaimed at protests against the privately led train extension, the ABC reported at the time. Crowds chanted back at Caton in response: 'Tell 'em they're dreamin'.' Sydney's expansive rail network is Australia's busiest, but it's almost impossible to catch a train to a beach to catch some waves. That's despite a long history of proposals to extend lines to the city's world-famous beaches. Unlike Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach, New York's Coney Island and even Melbourne's Brighton beach, residents and tourists can't catch a train to Sydney's globally recognised Bondi or Manly – or indeed any ocean beach in the eastern suburbs or north of the city. (Cronulla beach, 20km south of the city centre, can be reached by train, but the trip takes an hour.) Instead, beachgoers are forced into often-crowded buses or cars, the latter being expensive and difficult to park on busy days. Roads in summer can be heavily congested. Why Sydney's beaches remain inaccessible is explained by how the city expanded, as well as a mid-20th-century decision described as 'organised vandalism' and persistent efforts by beachside locals to limit public transport and a perceived influx of 'outsiders'. It might be hard to imagine today, but rail was once the main mode of transport to the city's beaches. Railways were first built in New South Wales primarily to send agricultural products from rural areas into Sydney, says Dr Geoffrey Clifton, a senior lecturer in transport and logistics management at the University of Sydney. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Heavy rail lines were gradually extended and, as Sydney expanded, so did the train network. By the late 1800s, light rail – or trams – emerged as an alternative. 'Trams made more sense in the east of Sydney, where distances were shorter and the land was already developed,' Clifton says. But rural politicians and leaders with interests – commonly land speculation – in the comparatively underdeveloped western suburbs continued to support heavy rail. 'It was a competition between those who saw trams as the future and those who believed in trains.' Tram lines sprang up across Sydney's north shore and eastern suburbs, including to the beaches. Sydney developed one of the largest tram networks in the world and services were fast – in many cases speedier than the few modern lines resurrected 100 years later. The expression 'shoot through like a Bondi tram' was born. But Sydney, like much of the world, was then changed by the car. 'Firstly, after world war one, returning soldiers who'd driven trucks in the war bought themselves bus licences, and that drove suburban development away from trams and started the sprawl of Sydney,' Clifton says. 'After world war two, everyone was buying cars, patronage started to drop off, and by that stage the tram network needed serious investment and renewal.' Instead, leaders chose to tear up Sydney's tram network and replaced it with buses, most of which still run today. The decision was popular at a time when buses were cheaper to run and could cope with demand, but it is now seen as foolish by many transport experts. Mathew Hounsell, a researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, describes the destruction as 'the largest organised vandalism in our nation's history'. In the decades since the last service on Sydney's original tram network concluded in 1961, there have been campaigns for new train lines and extensions to beachside suburbs. A 1970s study proposed building a heavy rail line from North Sydney station to the farthest of the northern beaches. Half a kilometre of tunnel was constructed towards Mosman, but the plan never progressed, mostly because of local opposition and challenges in acquiring land and traversing difficult terrain. There were plans to extend rail through Sydney's eastern suburbs – including further than the limited Bondi beach proposal that Caton objected to in the late 1990s. The Eastern Suburbs line to Bondi Junction in the 1970s was a rare example of a rail line built to an already densified part of Sydney in the post-tram era. During construction, about 100 metres of tunnel was built beyond Bondi Junction towards the beach. But it has since been repurposed to turn trains around. There were also proposals for extensions to Maroubra and Malabar that failed to materialise. The resistance to adding rail infrastructure to already settled suburbs was evident in Woollahra, where a partially constructed station on the Eastern Suburbs line was never completed. Partially built platforms remain visible but unused due to resident objections in the 1970s. Recent calls to finish building Woollahra station go to the heart of the nimby v yimby ('yes in my back yard') tension. Generally, increased housing density has been the basis for new train lines being laid in Australia 'A lot of the problem with why these proposals go nowhere is because these suburbs are already well developed, there's already higher density and apartments,' Clifton says. 'So there's less incentive for governments to spend the money without the potential to get an uplift in housing, a return on investment.' The transport academic says this philosophy dictated development in Sydney well before the current Minns government's transport-oriented development program. 'The problem for beach suburbs is that they already had the rail investment when they were growing, and while they've only become denser since, the tram lines have been torn up,' Clifton says. Despite the lack of a train station at Bondi beach, people still flock there. Traffic and parking woes have intensified in the decades since locals successfully defeated the rail proposal. Buses that have filled the void are among Sydney's busiest. Annual ridership on the 333 'from the city to the sea' bus route, which runs as often as every three minutes, has exceeded 8 million in recent years, significantly more than some of Sydney's heavy rail lines such as the T5. Caton is frustrated when catching a crowded bus that has to contend with traffic snaking up the hills of Bondi towards the city – but he doesn't regret campaigning against the train line. 'The train did absolutely nothing for the locals, sure, it was good for getting more people to Bondi, but it didn't do anything for us,' Caton says. His opposition was based on the proposal's lack of additional stations to serve residents along Bondi Road or the north of the suburb. Having just one station at the beach would have led to chaos, he insists. Caton says his anti-trains stance was not nimbyism but admits that in the years since he has rallied with fellow residents against several other proposals regarding local traffic and moves to reduce street parking. 'We are fighting all of these changes, but it's because they're stupid decisions; they don't consult the people who live here.' He says a train to the beach would make more sense elsewhere, such as at Maroubra. For now, Sydney must make do with low-capacity buses. An articulated bus such as those that run to Bondi can hold about 110 passengers compared with an average Sydney train service that moves 1,200 people. Buses also have a bumpier ride, are susceptible to traffic jams and aren't always accessible for older passengers, people with young children and those with disabilities. The lack of trains makes getting to beaches in Sydney harder but the nimby campaigns haven't made the city's sand exclusive. 'There are no gatekeepers,' says Louis Nowra, the author of a biography of Sydney. He notes that the bus between Bondi Junction and the beach only adds 10 minutes to the journey for people travelling from western Sydney, for example. 'If you live in Bondi, you have to put up with crowds and cars. I don't see a train system alleviating that,' Nowra says. Many people prefer less busy parts of Sydney, argues Nowra, who was turned off Bondi after attending a recent literary festival. 'I found the crowds claustrophobic, so I think Bondi has reached saturation point without more fucking visitors.' Asked if it's more difficult to live in Bondi in 2025 compared with 1998, when the rail extension was proposed, Caton is frank. 'Oh God yes, but a train would have turned Bondi into Surfers Paradise.' Given the transport-oriented development focus of the current NSW government, hopes for new rail infrastructure to the beaches are subdued. Clifton says extending existing light rail from Randwick to Coogee beach and from Kingsford to Maroubra beach are the most plausible options. But it would need significant support and campaigning from the local council and community, with Clifton pointing to the City of Sydney mayor Clover Moore's continued lobbying for the George Street light rail. 'If local communities want that, they should be developing plans and … advocating to government for those extensions,' Clayton says. The Randwick council mayor, Dylan Parker, says he would welcome government investing in such extensions. However, the council has not been actively lobbying for them. Guardian Australia understands the incline on Coogee Bay Road has been identified as a barrier to extending the light rail to Coogee beach. While trams historically travelled that route, the gradient could be problematic for the larger rolling stock in use today. Outside of extending light rail, future projects in Sydney are for driverless Metro trains, with the era of extending Sydney's heavy rail network, which has been hamstrung by maintenance problems and union disagreements, considered over. The NSW government is considering potential eastern extensions of the Sydney Metro West line set to open next decade. Proposals include running trains from the CBD to Green Square, the University of New South Wales and on to Maroubra and Malabar – which Randwick council supports.
Express Tribune
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
After the last word
On April 22, nearly two and a half years after Joan Didion's death, a slim but arresting volume titled Notes to John appeared on shelves. Published by Knopf, the collection comprises fragments: personal memos, tender jottings, reminders to herself, and letters addressed to her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, after his death in 2003. In true Didion style, even her unfinished, offhand scraps shimmer with clarity and literary precision. But reading Notes to John is a disquieting experience: you are tugged in close, into the bone of her grief, and yet held at arm's length. It is as if you've found someone's diary under their pillow and, despite knowing better, can't stop turning the pages. That tug-of-war between public and private, between a writer's legacy and their consent, is the central tension in publishing a dead person's notebooks. It's a literary act and a voyeuristic one. Notes to John may be the catalyst, but the phenomenon is hardly new. From the exhaustive curation of Virginia Woolf's diaries to the belated release of Franz Kafka's letters (which he explicitly asked to be destroyed), publishing posthumous writing has become a well-oiled machine. The ethics, however, remain as blurry as a half-erased pencil note in the margin of a draft. The author is absent There is something particularly vulnerable about the genre of the note. Unlike novels or essays, letters and diaries are not written with an audience in mind; at least, not a public one. And yet, perhaps paradoxically, they often reveal more than an entire memoir. In Didion's Notes to John, her sentences are brief, sharp, sometimes halting. "I never feel guilty about working," she writes, somewhere between dream and discipline. It's devastating in its casualness. But should we be reading this? When you hold a writer's diary, you are confronted with the illusion of intimacy. But the writer is gone. They cannot clarify, redact, or resist. Their editor is often a family member, a literary executor, or a publisher with contractual rights but not always moral ones. Shaun Usher's Lists of Note and More Lists of Note anthologise lists written by the famous and the long-dead: Da Vinci's shopping notes, Marilyn Monroe's acting prep, Isaac Newton's sins, presented with curatorial glee. They're fascinating, yes, but they also decontextualise deeply personal documents into coffee-table curiosities. Dead men do tell tales In Kafka's case, the betrayal was flagrant. He instructed his friend Max Brod to burn all of his unpublished manuscripts. Brod didn't, and the result is that much of Kafka's genius, The Trial, The Castle, his heartbreaking letters to Milena and Felice, came to light only after his death. Without that breach of trust, there would be no Kafka in the canon. So was Brod wrong? Legally, no. Literarily, certainly not. Ethically? Well. Virginia Woolf's diaries and letters were curated posthumously first by her husband Leonard Woolf, and then by his nephew, Quentin Bell. Leonard admitted to cutting large swathes of material. Her personality, her flirtations, her frustrations with the Bloomsbury crowd, these only surfaced in later, more complete editions. Each round of publication brought her closer to her readers and arguably farther from the version of herself she wanted to project. We are reading a Woolf curated by Leonard, filtered through edits and omissions; we are mourning a Didion arranged by her editor, not by Didion herself. The issue at hand is not just literary but legal. The ownership of the "self" after death falls into ambiguous hands, sometimes the estate, sometimes the publisher, sometimes the reader's projection. In Didion's case, her longtime editor Shelley Wanger helped assemble the notes, presumably with care and intention. But Didion, famously in control of her image and language, is no longer here to confirm whether she wanted these fragments to be seen. The romance of rawness There's something addictive about the "raw" version of a writer. We crave the uncut, the messy, the bloodied first draft. That desire is partly what fuels the publication of these private documents. They allow us to feel like we've accessed something real, beyond performance. The literary world, in turn, benefits from this hunger. Editors gain prestige for unearthing unpublished material. Publishers reap sales from both completists and the newly curious. Fans post screenshots of notes that feel like confessions. Everyone wins, except maybe the person who wrote them. This urge isn't limited to literary estates. Think of how Anne Frank's diary was originally edited by her father to remove parts about her sexuality and frustration with her mother. Later, full editions emerged, richer and more complicated. Readers rejoiced, but the diary's shift from personal record to historical document carries a cost. Somewhere, the lines blur between honouring a voice and exploiting it. Afterlife in the internet age Today, we all keep fragments: Google Docs with no title, iPhone notes about dreams or shopping or shame. If we're writers, perhaps we think some of these might be useful for a future essay, a novel, a letter we mean to write but never do. But what if, after we die, someone else decides what deserves to be seen? The politics of posthumous publication are not just about famous authors; they are about all of us. In the digital age, where drafts and thoughts live forever in clouds and caches, anyone's notes might outlive them. The desire to know a person more "authentically" can too easily become a desire to know them without their permission. Copyright adds another layer of complexity. A note never meant for publication occupies a murky legal space; its ownership is uncertain. Grief, nostalgia, even a stray sentence from a dead woman to her dead husband all become subject to claims, though they resist easy commodification. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion wrote about keeping John's shoes after he died, irrationally believing he might need them. Notes to John feels like an extension of that magical thinking, a belief that speaking to the dead can somehow keep them present, or that reading their words might bring them back. Yet publishing such words transforms a private ritual into a public spectacle. The dynamics of posthumous publication often benefit publishers, estates, and readers, while consent from the author remains absent. As readers, we inherit both the privilege and the burden of that imbalance. We are owed nothing, and yet we often take everything. To read Notes to John is to be moved, but also to be implicated. The dead may not speak for themselves, but they wrote. That, sometimes, must be enough.
Boston Globe
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Meet the city that inspired Beverly Hills
Not to mention, Beverly Hills, Calif., was named after our fair city by real estate developer Burton Green in 1907. (Our Beverly was founded in 1626.) The Massachusetts Beverly has hills, too; one of the prettiest is Long Hill ( Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up And there's this: Beverly Harbor was a base for early American naval operations. Privateer Hannah, converted from a fishing schooner to a warship armed with guns and cannons, was the first ship commissioned by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. In 1775, Captain Nicholas Broughton patrolled the coast in the Hannah , engaging with the British Royal Navy sloop HMS Nautilus. Advertisement Culture — we've got it Fast-forward 250 years: What is Beverly like today? This North Shore city, with a population of around 42,500, 'packs a punch for a town of its size,' says Erin Truex, executive director of Beverly Main Streets ( Why are we sharing this now? On June 14, Arts Fest Beverly ( The best-known spot in Beverly is probably the 103-year-old Cabot Theatre ( There's no Rodeo Drive, but Beverly, Mass., offers its own form of eye candy — art. This piece by artist Jennifer Toler at Porter Mill Studios is one (very cool) example. Diane Bair Musical theater fans may also be familiar with award-winning North Shore Music Theatre ( Advertisement The old warehouses along downtown's Rantoul Street have been renovated and transformed into housing and maker spaces like Porter Mill Studios ( Montserrat College of Art campus ( If you want to make art, not just admire it, Beverly offers some options, including Score & Slip ( Clay Dreaming ( One of Beverly's more unique businesses is The Castle, a board game cafe with 1,000 games. (Tip: If you're drinking, don't play Uno!) Diane Bair Wandering around Beverly's downtown, you'll get a whiff of 'college town vibe,' which makes sense: In addition to the art school, Beverly is home to Endicott College ( The Castle ( Gentile Brewing Company ( Advertisement Mission Boat House sits on an iconic spot in Beverly, with views of the Beverly-Salem Bridge. Diane Bair Local haunts (minus the witches) Those who remember the old McDonald's restaurant on the Beverly-Salem bridge will notice a spiffy waterfront restaurant in its place, Mission Boat House ( A&B Burgers ( Rosetti Restaurant ( Don't let the strip mall location fool you: The Italian and Italian-American food at Rosetti Restaurant Beverly is worth a visit (shown here: shrimp flatbread). This is the sister location to Rosetti Restaurant in Lynn. Diane Bair One of us lived in Beverly for several years, and after a nine-year absence, we were happy to see some old favorites still operating, including Soma ( Siam Delight ( For dessert, there's an outpost of Harbor Sweets ( Henry's Fine Foods ( Advertisement You haven't really seen Beverly until you've gone to Lynch Park , the city's unofficial backyard. There's a small beach, perfect for watching kite-surfers in the cove, and a wide green lawn with picnic tables and lawn-facing benches. There's a snack bar, open seasonally, a band shell, and paths that lead to the ocean. The park's famous tiered Rose Garden is modeled after Italian gardens, and a much-loved spot for wedding photos. Another irresistible photo op: the Falconer statue, a replica of the original in New York's Central Park, which was sculpted by George Blackall Simonds in 1872. Given all of this, we were happy to be back in the old haunt. Yes, it's a bit gussied-up with all of those reimagined warehouses, not to mention a Whole Foods Market. But it still has a friendly feel, good places to eat, and a burgeoning art scene. 'Everybody knows Salem, but Beverly is a sleeper,' says Mark Jaffe, who's on the board of the Cabot and has lived in Beverly for most of his life. 'And the history is incredible. I can't imagine living anyplace else.' Diane Bair and Pamela Wright can be reached at
Scottish Sun
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Scottish Sun
I watched maniac hack his own neck with kitchen knife & took on infamous ‘suicide bomber'…my life as hostage negotiator
One particularly tragic case continues to haunt ex-Met chief John Sutherland to this day EDGE OF DISASTER I watched maniac hack his own neck with kitchen knife & took on infamous 'suicide bomber'…my life as hostage negotiator Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) AS filing cabinets, chairs and shattered glass rained from the sky, John Sutherland felt like he was in a scene from the apocalypse. Hours earlier a man wearing a suicide vest and wielding a homemade flamethrower had stormed offices on London's Tottenham Court Road and taken terrified hostages, including a pregnant woman. 10 John Sutherland spent 26 years with the Met Police, working as a hostage negotiator Credit: Supplied 10 Suspected 'terrorist' Michael Green was arrested over the 'Siege of London' of 2012 Credit: Sky News 10 Cabinets, chairs and computers were thrown from the windows of an office block on Tottenham Court Road Credit: AFP 10 The suspect is led away by police Credit: David Hartley More than 1,000 workers, shoppers and tourists were evacuated as it was feared the 'terrorist' had enough explosives to 'bring the whole building down with everyone in it'. Dubbed 'the Siege of London', it was an exceptionally-high alert situation due to it being three months before the 2012 Summer Olympics. 'It was one of the most extraordinary days of my whole career,' former Met Police Chief Superintendent John, now 55, tells us. 'I was on the scene working out what on earth to do when I heard the sound of glass shattering. I looked up and a window was being broken. 'A series of office equipment - computers, furniture, cabinets, everything - rained down onto the street below. It was genuinely apocalyptic.' Fortunately, despite threatening to "blow everyone up", the suspect's bomb jacket was fake and the attacker wasn't a terrorist but a disgruntled HGV driver. Ex-BNP candidate Michael Green, then 48, carried out the siege to retrieve £1,000 he paid for a driving course after failing his exams twice and feeling he had 'nothing left to live for'. Green forced his hostages to lob office supplies through a window to 'liquidise some assets'. 'He raided their offices as way to settle his grievances after some form of meltdown,' John says. 'It could have ended terribly but we managed to get him and everyone out unscathed.' It's one of many colourful tales from the retired Met officer, who has mined his experiences over 26 years as a hostage and crisis negotiator to pen his Sunday Times bestselling crime thriller, The Castle. I'm a cop turned vigilante who hunted down a one-man crime wave after police turned a blind eye In an exclusive interview, John explains that unlike in Hollywood movies, 90 per cent of his work was 'holding out a hand' to those in crisis on 'the worst day of their lives'. He tackled dozens of threats in London and recalled the simple question he was routinely asked before being dispatched on a job: 'Are you ready to save a life?' 'Whether it was 3am or in the middle of the afternoon, when you heard those words it focused the mind, because it was the only thing that mattered,' John says. 'I've always said the greatest duty and privilege for any police officer is to save the life of another human being, and that is the exact job of a negotiator.' 10 Debris from the office equipment thrown out of a window Credit: Getty 10 Armed police and snipers raced to the scene in April 2012 Credit: Reuters Stand-off tragedy Despite that, it was a deeply challenging and emotionally turbulent role which is voluntary within the police force. When on shift, negotiators are on-call 24 hours a day for that week. Most stand-offs go on for a few hours, but John said it was not unusual for them to last two to three days. One of the longest he was involved with was the tragic Markham Square siege in London's Chelsea on May 6, 2008. John was the negotiator for the five-hour stand-off which ended with wealthy divorce barrister Mark Saunders being shot dead by police. The 32-year-old, who had represented presenter Chris Tarrant, had fired shotgun rounds from his £2.2million home during a mental health episode linked to alcohol and drugs. 10 Barrister Mark Saunders died during a stand-off with police Credit: Handout 10 John tried to talk down the shotgun-wielding barrister for five hours Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd 10 Mark Saunders during the Markham Square stand-off Credit: Handout Out of respect for Mark's widow, John only says a few words about the tragedy, admitting: 'It was one of the days that will stay with me for the rest of my life.' Previously in his memoir, Blue, John mournfully explained how "a man died on my watch", and he was "the last living soul to hold a conversation with him". Another harrowing encounter saw John talk down an Eastern European man who was threatening to throw himself from the 17th floor of a block of flats in Islington overlooking Arsenal's Emirates stadium. 'He was standing on the wrong side of the window on a ledge that was six inches wide, if that,' John recalls. 'Inexplicably, the windows opened into space with no balconies. It was one of the days that will stay with me for the rest of my life John Sutherland 'I don't know how long I was with him, all I know was that it was a hell of a long way down and any of the next moments could have been his last. 'It was difficult talking to him because I didn't speak his language, but as a negotiator you try to find common humanity and understand the story of the person you're dealing with. 'For him it was a perfect storm of being unable to get a job because he had no address, but not being able to have an address because he didn't have a job.' John admits he had no idea whether he would be able to coax the man back inside after he'd reached such a heartbreaking 'point of desperation', but thankfully he succeeded. Heartbroken OAP John tells us the key to a successful hostage negotiation is the art of listening, as was proven in an extraordinary case at an old people's home. Upon arriving, John was taken into a communal area where a man in his 80s sat in an armchair holding a large kitchen knife to his throat. 'There was almost a surreal nature to the scene, he clearly represented no threat to anyone else but a significant threat to himself,' John recalls. He approached him slowly and sat in an armchair nearby, knowing he could move much faster should he need to flee, and "asked the old boy tell his story'. It was difficult talking to him because I didn't speak his language, but as a negotiator you try to find common humanity and understand the story of the person you're dealing with John Sutherland 'It transgressed, later on in life, he'd fallen in love with a fellow resident of the home but his feelings were not reciprocated," John says. 'In fact she had been fairly unkind to him and he was an old boy with a broken heart. I listened to him and he agreed to put the knife down.' The need to be heard and 'feeling that they matter' were common themes, with John recounting many stories of people on the edge after mental health struggles. They include a man threatening to jump into an icy cold pond on Hampstead Heath at 3am and a drug addict holding a hypodermic syringe in his neck 'as a weapon'. Life in the balance 10 John has turned to writing crime novels Credit: collect By the time John arrived at one difficult incident there was already a line of territorial support group (TSG) officers on the scene, clad with long shields. He recalls: 'The man in his 20s was in the kitchen-diner of a flat on one side, with a knife to his throat, and I was safely behind the shields trying to engage with him. 'This poor young guy was seriously mentally ill. It was one of few times in my career where I've spoken to someone directly and knew mine wasn't the only voice they were hearing.' John remembers him 'pacing continually backwards and forward, like a tiger I'd seen in London Zoo', twisting the knife more and more. If there's a life hanging in the balance, you can't wait for anyone else. You have to get on and deal with what is in front of you John Sutherland 'One minute he was with us, partly lucid, the next he was somewhere else,' he recalls. The man eventually surrendered after speaking to his mum on the phone. In another incident a man with a kitchen knife was furiously 'sawing backwards and forwards on his head and neck' while holding his ex-girlfriend and child hostage. John recalls the "curtain of blood running down his face and soaking his clothes", adding it reminded him of a scene from the Stephen King film Carrie. Race against time Whenever he received a dispatch call, John says there was an element of adrenaline, which was followed by exhaustion "so deep you're almost unable to speak or walk" afterwards. But he remained motivated by the 'profound sense that today we did something good'. He retired in February 2018, and John has now turned his hand to writing books including memoirs Blue and Crossing The Line, and fiction titles The Siege, The Fallen and his latest novel, The Castle. 'Psychologically and emotionally I draw on my lived experience," he says. "Alex, one of the lead characters [in The Castle], is a version of me, but is a million times more interesting. 'But my deeper purpose to all of it, which I feel very passionately about having worked as a hostage and crisis negotiator, is for people to re-learn the art of listening. 'In the world at the moment it seems that most of us are shouting at each other and not listening. Listening is in danger of becoming a lost art. 'While I hope my thrillers are thrilling, subtly they have something to say about the ways that we listen and how it can do some good in the world. It can save people's lives.' John Sutherland's latest novel The Castle, a Sunday Times bestseller, published by Orion, is available for £9.99 in paperback, as well as in eBook and audio formats.
India.com
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- India.com
6 Best Works of Franz Kafka: Stories That Changed Modern Literature
photoDetails english 2908398 Franz Kafka, is renowned for his exploration of themes like alienation, existential anxiety, and the absurdity of bureaucracy. His distinct, surreal style often called "Kafkaesque" is evident in works such as The Metamorphosis, The Trial, The Castle, and In the Penal Colony. Scroll to read more about him. Updated:May 30, 2025, 03:23 PM IST About Kafka 1 / 7 Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July, 1833 in Prague, Czechia. His work explores themes of alienation, existential dread, and oppressive bureaucracy. Kafka's writing style is marked by dark humor, and nightmarish scenarios, often referred to as "Kafkaesque'. The Metamorphosis 2 / 7 This iconic novel was published in 1915, The story shows the tension between individual identity and societal roles. The protagonist's emotional journey highlights the cruelty of conditional love and the deep human need for understanding. The Castle 3 / 7 This novel was published in 1926 in an unfinished book, The novel delves into themes of bureaucracy, alienation, and the search for meaning. Kafka portrays a confusing, indifferent system that frustrates K's, the protagonist's every effort. In The Penal Colony 4 / 7 Published in 1919, this short story examines themes of justice, punishment, and blind adherence to tradition. Kafka's storytelling triggers discomfort and contemplation, using stark imagery and ethical ambiguity to challenge the reader's sense of fairness and authority. The Trial 5 / 7 This amazing novel was published in 1925. The book explores existential anxiety, powerlessness, and the human longing for clarity and justice. The protagonist, Josef K., is arrested and prosecuted by a mysterious and inaccessible legal system. The charges against him are never revealed. Letters to Milena 6 / 7 These deeply personal letters offer a rare glimpse into Kafka's emotional world. Addressed to Milena Jesenská, his beloved, they reveal themes of longing, vulnerability, love, and spiritual connection and the fact that despite their intimacy, Kafka and Milena never lived together which makes these letters more intimate. The Hunger Artist 7 / 7 Published in 1922, is a short story that follows a professional artist who performs public fasting as an art form. Over time, audiences lose interest in his act, and he is forgotten by his audience. The story explores themes of isolation, misunderstood artistry, and existential longing.
