My Stack delivery came yesterday, with a lovely little card announcing a free magazine I hadn't heard of from Hamish Hamilton publishers, called Five Dials.
When I clicked through, Five Dials turns out to be a brilliant
publication that's available as a pdf download. I
couldn't quite believe all the good things that were in it – and better
still, I'm just catching up with it now and there are 12 previous issues
all sitting there waiting. It's nicely designed by Dean Allen to be printed out, or read online. Taking the subject of Festivals as its theme issue 13 includes illustrations by Raymond Pettibon ('Where the image stops and the words begin is not that clear cut'), A Festival Cloud Primer – so you know what to look for – 'Losing my Edge' by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem 'Happiness is complicated and you become more complicated as you age' and 'Agony Uncle' Alain de Botton on how we shouldn't fret too much about what other people think, for, 'as Schopenhauer put the question: "Would a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of his audience if it were known to him that, with the exception of one or two, it consisted entirely of deaf people".' Well quite. Not to mention fiction, photos and other essays – it's a treat.
