Bruce Omar Yates

Better Known

Bruce Omar Yates discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Bruce Omar Yates was born in London to an English father and an Indian mother. Bruce grew up in the South of France before returning to London to study Literature and Film at King’s College London. Bruce is principal songwriter for the cult rock groups Famy, who released their album We Fam Econo in 2014, and Los Porcos, who released their album Porco Mio in 2016. The Muslim Cowboy is his first novel and is out now from Dead Ink Books at https://deadinkbooks.com/product/the-muslim-cowboy/.

1. English Milk Punch: a delicious low-ABV punch made from brandy, tea, spices and milk. It was popular in Victorian times - Dickens would drink it - as it is shelf stable. After refrigeration came along it lost popularity.

2. I Cantautori Genovesi: Fabrizio De Andre, Gino Paoli, Luigi Tenco (and others) - a group of arty, literary songwriters from Genoa in the 1960s. They would enter songs to compete against each other in the Sanremo Music Festival. Deep romance. Luigi Tenco shot himself after losing the competition one year.

3. Martin Maloney: A lesser celebrated but wildly influential painter from the YBA generation. His painting style is deliberately crude but makes deeply educated references to the canon.

4. Sickle Cell Disease: One of the most common inherited diseases in the world, very cruel and life threatening, and particularly rife in West Africa and India.

5. The Gulag Archipelago: Not exactly unknown, but not enough people have read it. The subject of Soviet war crimes is neglected relative to their scale, the book had a big historical impact, and Solzhenitsyn was a really great writer.

6. Parenting: Discussion in the culture might make you think that parenting is exhausting, stressful, financially burdensome, and so on, but it's not, it's just wonderful.

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