The Thousands

Issue 11 of Five Dials begins with a note on lists, and how useful they can be as effective slices of biography, hinting at what’s going on in a person’s life at the time of list writing.

If I showed you my current list you might dislocate your jaw from yawning so hard ("Remove apostrophe from ‘you’re’", "Change photo background to white") so I thought instead I’d write a list of the things that went through my head while reading Five Dials:

1) Heh. 2) Say what? They got Raymond Chandler? 3) And Alain de Botton? 4) They’re going dancing with Jonathon Safran Foer? 5) Who are these people? I’m googling! 6) Ohhhhh, I get it.

Five Dials quietly lives under the editorial wing of Hamish Hamilton, one of London’s oldest publishing houses and home to the likes of Salinger, Sartre, Camus, Capote and Eggers, as well as all those mentioned above.

Each issue has a theme. This one’s called ‘Wilton’s’ and was put together to go with their Book Slam at Wilton’s Music Hall (yeah, they do sweet literary events too – no big deal).

Final item on my list: 7) Hi Craig, wanna do a life swap?