Caitlin Leishman

A psychological thriller that shows ‘just leave’ is hardly that simple. This book digs in under the skin and lodges itself in the gut – tying knots and clawing at the lungs, zapping the breath out of you.

A woman changes her name, dons a uniform of exquisitely tailored suits and, with genuine talent, sheds her old skin in order to become a world-class conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic – to become Lydia Tár.

I borrowed a bundle of books from a former colleague, the kind of sunny person who leaves David Sedaris’ ‘Naked’ on your desk. Her taste in other books was also very much to my liking. Yet, I returned them all…except one—a collection of works by Joan Didion. On the spine are the words ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live.’

‘A garden for the blind.’ This is how Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, describes his backyard.

In his short story The Nose, Nikolai Gogol wrote that, ‘The world is full of the most outrageous nonsense.’ And it opens with nothing less than that.

Some people find comfort in the strangest of places; camping, IKEA, Love Island. I like dingy cobblestoned alleyways, with officers that are busy, arrogant and a bit self-righteous who spend most of their working life in some kind of transit.

Capernaum is a film about an 11 year-old boy (Zain) who, while serving a five year prison sentence, sues his parents for giving birth to him. 

Upon finishing Patrick Radden Keefe’s ‘Say Nothing’, a work of investigative journalism that pieces together the broken fragments of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, I was bursting with a sense of injustice and confusion about whether I was immorally sympathising with terrorists.  

In Orwell’s fictional state of Oceania, paranoia breeds fear, and the human reaction to fear is to seek protection. This combination led the citizens of Oceania into the Party’s arms.

Photographers and Architects both frame space and are selective when at work. In his book, Spectrum, John Pawson clarifies the distinctions between the two practices, despite also evincing a common sentiment.