The Storyteller
Latest Article
23rd November 2021
In this fifth chapter of his professional memoirs, to be published in six parts, Oliver Ash recalls how one of the greats of Paris real estate, Miles d’Arcy Irvine, helped shape his career in the boom of the late 80s. To catch up with the first four chapters, please follow the link at the bottom of this piece.
Miles above all: driving for miles
As well as his considerable mental capacities, Miles had a wonderful sense of humour and I rarely found him unable to take a joke. The first time I... Read More >
Recent Articles:
22nd November 2021
Musings from one of America’s foremost commentators.
I turned 79 a week ago and I’m quite satisfied with the promotion. I celebrated with lunch with five friends at an outdoor restaurant under a canopy on a perfect summer afternoon and in Read More >
16th November 2021
In this fifth chapter of his professional memoirs, to be published in six parts, Oliver Ash recalls how one of the greats of Paris real estate, Miles d’Arcy Irvine, helped shape his career in the boom of the late 80s. To catch up with the Read More >
15th November 2021
Words embody more than just letters.
I have, until recently, been committing a thoroughly modern crime: putting full stops at the end of texts. My children alerted me to the transgression. A full stop is, apparently, ‘aggressive’, Read More >
10th November 2021
In this fifth chapter of his professional memoirs, to be published in six parts, Oliver Ash recalls how one of the greats of Paris real estate, Miles d’Arcy Irvine, helped shape his career in the boom of the late 80s. To catch up with the Read More >
8th November 2021
I love October and I hate to see it pass so quickly. My love and I ate dinner outdoors last Friday and it felt like the Last Time and as an old man, I find Lasts rather painful. I rode the Amtrak into New York from Boston, with that delicious Read More >
21st October 2021
Nearly 40 years ago, I was researching the life and work of a relative, the Victorian novelist Mary Linskill; daughter of a Whitby jet worker and jailer. To do that properly I had to become a member of the Whitby and District Literary and Read More >
18th October 2021
I am an orphan, which is not so unusual for a man of 79, and like everyone else I know, I work out of my own home. At the moment I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of Cheerios beside the laptop and a cup of coffee (black). I have no Read More >
11th October 2021
Imagining the ultimate scorecard.
Kipling, R.
Galsworthy, J.
Eliot, T.
Russell, B.
Churchill, W. [Capt]
Golding, W.
Pinter, H.
Lessing, D.
Naipaul, V.
Ishiguro, K.
Dylan, R.
In this summer sun’s season Read More >
4th October 2021
Saturday morning, walking around south Minneapolis, a neighborhood where – back in my youth – when your elders start neglecting their lawn, you might move them out of the bungalow and plant them here in a one-BR apt until they can no longer Read More >
20th September 2021
Maybe it’s just me, but I have a nagging feeling that my gender, which once was fairly successful – Jonas Salk, Saul Bellow, Lowell Thomas, Tom Jones, the list goes on – is sagging and sinking, uncertain about changing norms of behaviour, Read More >
13th September 2021
I was having a hard time falling asleep the other night because I’d thought of something that I was afraid of forgetting if I fell asleep, which was keeping me awake. Not that it was the sort of timeless thing you see printed on coffee cups Read More >
9th September 2021
In this very special series of exclusive articles for The Property Chronicle, Australian property legend Norman Harker reflects on his extraordinary 50-year life in real estate. He will pull no punches partly because, as he freely admits, Norman Read More >
24th August 2021
My favourite word today is ‘unsubscribe’ and I’ve been online clicking it on dozens of emails asking for my cash contributions to their battle on behalf of the good, the true and the beautiful, which one wants to support, but once you do, Read More >
19th August 2021
The fastest man in the world is now Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy, who ran the 100-metre dash in Tokyo in 9.80 seconds, and bravo for him, but when you peak at 26 you face a long descent into normality. You run that fast and you miss a lot, Read More >
4th August 2021
The astonishing Collin Morikawa was in the news this week, kissing the British Open trophy, something a man would rather not do with the Delta variant around, not knowing how many hundred folks had touched the thing, but he was excited, having Read More >
29th July 2021
Business and art go together like... Well, these days, the proverbial horse and carriage
ndy Warhol, a man who knew whereof he spoke, once observed, “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best Read More >
28th July 2021
In this fifth chapter of his professional memoirs, to be published in six parts, Oliver Ash recalls how one of the greats of Paris real estate helped shape his career in the boom of the late 80s. To read or re-read the first four chapters of Read More >
15th July 2021
In this very special series of exclusive articles for the Property Chronicle, Australian property legend Norman Harker reflects on his extraordinary 50-year life in real estate. He will pull no punches partly because, as he freely admits, Norman Read More >
13th July 2021
It was a surprise to see an ex-pupil on Interpol’s Most Wanted list. I suppose I had assumed that life at a fairly decent sort of school in a fairly decent sort of place would cocoon me from the worst of the criminal element, but here he was, Read More >
6th July 2021
Staying with family friends in Chicago back in the 70s, I had an early introduction to a couple of the world’s great architects. My host was an architect and a lecturer at Northwestern University and the Windy City was for him a giant Read More >
6th May 2021
Master poker player Achilleas Kallakis used his skills to build a property empire based on fraud and forgery
Achilleas Kallakis was still in prison in the summer of 2014, when I wrote to ask if he fancied telling his astonishing tale. The man Read More >
19th April 2021
In a market economy, consumers vote with their dollars. The survival and growth of a business depends pivotally upon how effectively it convinces customers to buy its products over those of its competitors. But recently, consumers seem to expect Read More >
30th March 2021
The constraints of newspaper reporting helped hone the style of many great novelists, including Hemingway
Before they were literary celebrities, many authors spent time as jobbing journalists. Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, Read More >
4th March 2021
John Fowles was a conflicted novelist whose desire to change the world was at odds with his chosen genre of experimentalism, and whose literary ideals were quashed by his hefty sales figures.
Every writer is compelled to write. They must be, Read More >
16th February 2021
This article was originally published in April 2020.
A writer introduces his three go-to reads – short stories by JD Salinger and Denis Johnson, and a volume of essays and reviews by Martin Amis
For almost every author, writing fiction Read More >
15th February 2021
This article was originally published in October 2020.
With this novel, Raymond Chandler transformed the genre from the simple whodunnit to the philosophical musings of a troubled, flawed protagonist.
Raymond Chandler’s novel The Long Read More >
11th December 2020
So, just as one is beginning to adjust to the reality that there will be no Christmas trip home to Britain this year, no family gathering under the exuberantly giant tree culled from a neighbour’s plantation, no bleary eyed brisk Downland Read More >
11th May 2020
You would have thought that more than 130 years after Conan Doyle’s gentleman sleuth Sherlock Holmes first appeared in the Strand Magazine and was followed by Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade as well as Poirot, Maigret, Morse and all the rest, Read More >
20th March 2020
The Final Episode of our Crime Thriller set in the world of property
Following the deaths of property tycoon Charles Rudd and his CEO Nick O’Keeffe in a sailing accident in Liverpool Bay, insurance investigator William Rohm travelled north Read More >
21st February 2020
Insurance investigator William Rohm has discovered that before they were drowned in a sailing accident in Liverpool Bay, multi-millionaire Charles Rudd and his CEO Nick O’Keeffe had been threatened by a vengeful crime syndicate, less than Read More >
23rd January 2020
Following the deaths of property tycoon Charles Rudd and his CEO Nick O’Keeffe in a sailing accident in Liverpool Bay, insurance investigator William Rohm has travelled north to sign-off their big-money life policies. When he discovers that Read More >
10th January 2020
After property tycoon Charles Rudd and his CEO Nick O’Keeffe are drowned in a sailing accident in Liverpool Bay, insurance investigator William Rohm is sent north to sign-off their big-money life policies. But when Rudd’s widow casts doubt Read More >
13th December 2019
Following the deaths of property tycoon Charles Rudd and his CEO Nick O’Keeffe in a sailing accident, William Rohm has travelled to Liverpool to sign-off the life insurance claims. After meeting Rudd’s company secretary Guy Danvers, Rohm Read More >
15th November 2019
After property tycoon Charles Rudd and his CEO, Nick O’Keeffe, are lost in a sailing accident in Liverpool Bay, Will Rohm has travelled north to sign-off the resulting big-money life insurance claims. Following a meeting with Company Read More >
15th October 2019
When two businessmen are drowned in a sailing accident in Liverpool Bay, Insurance Investigator William Rohm is sent north to sign-off the claims. It should be routine. But as one of the dead men is multi-millionaire Charles Rudd, a property Read More >
26th September 2019
Episode one of our new crime thriller serial, set in the world of property
Will Rohm was hoping his drive north would be fast and uneventful and that this case would be trouble-free too. It was a big-money life insurance claim but if he could Read More >
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Face to Face
In-depth interviews with leading figures in the real estate/investment world.
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