It might be tedious to praise a book that has been doing so well but it would be dishonest not to. London Falling is beautifully written and makes for compulsive reading. I started it as soon as I had sat down in London Stansted Airport and finished it as I walked out of Katowice International Airport.

Zac Brettler was a 19-year-old Londoner from a rich — but, crucially, not that rich — family of British Jews. At his private school, he was surrounded by the children of Russian oligarchs, and he developed an attraction to conspicuous wealth. He began to hang around with shady businessmen — and to be involved in shady business deals. Then he disappeared.

Zac’s body was found on the banks of the Thames. It turned out that he had leapt off the fifth-floor balcony of a luxury apartment block, with CCTV capturing his final moments. The apartment was occupied by a gangster known as Indian Dave, who Zac had encountered through the slippery son of a controversial British Indian multi-millionaire. Zac had jumped, that was clear. But what had made him want to jump — or feel like he had to jump?

That question is never answered — at least definitively. True crime obsessives might find this disappointing — but this is often the truth of crime. What we know is the bizarre fact that Zac Brettler had been posing as the son of a deceased Russian oligarch. The gangster and his British-Indian business acquaintance had thought that the naive young teenager could be a path to easy riches.

Radden Keefe tells a gripping tale, but he never forgets that he is writing about real people who experienced a dreadful tragedy. The reader can’t forget it either. In one poignant detail, for example, just before Zac’s disappearance, his mother, who invested so much of herself in her family, snatches a moment of private personal pleasure as she has her photo taken against an illuminated pair of angel wings on Regent Street. “It was the last time for a long time that she would feel happy.”

On one level, London Falling is about a city built on artifice — wealth built on debt, careers built on bullshit, and prosperous and bustling streets built on dead bodies. On the back cover, the author Nick Hornby calls it an “unsettling book about my city — a city, it turns out, I don’t know at all”. I’m not sure the book is quite as revelatory a portrayal of London’s underside as some reviewers have thought. There is a lot of interesting stuff about the darkest elements of business and geopolitics, for sure. But as Radden Keefe himself writes in the book, we are past the heyday of dubious foreign wealth in London (much of which has emigrated to the Middle East). Indian Dave — who killed himself a year after Zac’s death — is an alarming figure, certainly, but conspiratorial rumblings in the book about his power and influence are somewhat undermined by the fact that he was dim enough to take it as an article of faith that a random teenager was the uber-rich son of a Russian oligarch.

As a book about alienation and self-invention, though, London Falling is a masterpiece. It very much succeeds in reflecting on the rootlessness of London, where people frantically attempt to define themselves in a stew of trends and archetypes. The bizarre trio of the middle-class British Jewish kid pretending to be a Russian multi-millionaire, the smooth-talking son of British Indian wealth acting like a successful businessman, and the gangster whose feared reputation is shaking amid old age and paranoia, make for a powerful perspective on dislocation and insecurity amid what Zygmunt Bauman called “liquid modernity”. True, “fake it till you make it” can be the formula for success stories, even if “fakin’ till it breaks him” can be the formula for horrors. But this is a striking book on the excesses of self-invention, especially when it starts from scratch. There are certainly multicultural questions here, though Radden Keefe is also right to point to economic abstraction and social media.

At the heart of the book is also a story about family — about how much parents can influence or even know their children. I must admit to feeling slight frustration as I read about Zac’s parents’ tolerance of their son’s descent into delusion. But then I remembered my own parents’ patient, hands-off approach to my eating disorder — and how much I suspect I would never have recovered if I had been compelled to try. Sometimes, the space between success and failure is luck. I don’t think any reader could fail to admire Matthew and Rachelle Brettler’s dedication to uncovering the truth about their son’s death — especially in the face of a police investigation that was at best incompetent and under-resourced. They do at least appear to have been fortunate to meet Mr Radden Keefe, though they were allegedly quite unfortunate to meet another well-known journalist who, it’s claimed, wanted money in exchange for covering the story, and then posted a photo of Zac’s corpse online.

One can’t help leaving the book thinking about the lies, horrors, and tragedies that nestle beneath the surface of our communities. When Zac met his businessman friend, he used to walk the latter’s dog. “Zac seemed to carry himself with a sense of pride,” writes Radden Keefe, “Strolling around Mayfair with this big, elegant, obviously expensive dog.” The dog was apparently present on the evening of Zac’s death. Somehow, I stumbled across a photo of the dog from the year after Zac died, on a page for “Street Dog Photography”. It is grinning for the camera, never thinking — as it, unlike a human being, could not be expected to think — about the young man with whom it used to walk.

Slurs, in broad terms, insult people on the basis of things they don’t deserve to be insulted for. It’s rare that I want to insult someone, and if I’m going to do it then I want it to apply to something they did wrong, and not something irrelevant to their wrongness.

So, for…

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Or would he? It’s nice to believe that Curtis made some kind of terrible mistake that would have seemed inexplicable to him in hindsight — but it is very possible that if he had not killed himself in 1980, he would have kil…

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I’m going to be very courageous here: I don’t think it is. But I’m going to try to make that argument in non-partisan ter…

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When I was in my early twenties — a loooong time ago — I was in dire need of a career direction. “Why don’t you sell some of your writing?” My Gran asked. “Oh, Gran. As if anyone would buy my writing.”

It wasn’t self-deprecation. It just seemed realistic. Nonetheless, ten years ago this month, my first real op-ed was published. I had written blogposts — so many blogposts — before but this was my first real column.

A woman I knew from Twitter, Claire Lehmann, had set up a webmag in Australia called Quillette. I felt inspired to write something. My first column was … rejected. But my second, about the persecuted church, was a winner.

I began writing for Quillette regularly. I had pretty short hours as an ESL teacher and no real hobbies other than drinking. It was fun to scratch my intellectual and political itches.

Those were the early days of what became the “Intellectual Dark Web” — when people of all sorts were reacting against censorious “social justice” activism. Quillette became a bit of a hub for such voices — so, in turn, I got attention. A couple of magazines commissioned me and, much to my own surprise, I had become a writer.

I’ve written a lot that has made me proud over the last ten years — pieces I think were right, pieces I think were funny, and pieces (not many pieces but some pieces) that I think were beautiful. (I remain pleased with “Year of the Cold”, “Bath Time” and “Confessions of an English teacher abroad”.)

I’ve had far more freedom to be playful than I would have guessed, from reviewing energy drinks to writing very seriously about professional wrestling. (Indeed, writing very seriously about deathmatch wrestling for a post-liberal journal.)

I’ve been very lucky, and I’m very grateful.

But you have to have had some very, very big successes to dwell on your successes. So, I thought it would be productive to write about the times when I’ve been wrong. What shouldn’t one do as an opinion columnist?

1. Don’t write about something that doesn’t interest you.

I’ve never written something I didn’t believe in — at least at the time — but I have accepted commissions on subjects that didn’t interest me. Granted, sometimes there are subjects that don’t quite grab you but that you become invested in as you learn about them. At other times, though, there are subjects you simply couldn’t care less about. When I’ve written about these subjects, my writing has been flatter than day-old beer.

2. Don’t rush an opinion for the sake of having an opinion.

I really regret — as I’ve written before — beating the drum in favour of shutdowns in March 2020. I had been concerned about COVID since early in January, and I did push back against some kinds of shutdowns, so I don’t want to frame myself as some kind of mere sheep, but I still supported major state action without a rational basis for doing so. I’m not sure I could have expressed a rational argument against shutdowns. But the point is that the world didn’t need Ben Sixsmith’s half-baked opinion. I could have just not had a prescriptive take. It’s dishonest to act as if we have clear and substantive opinions on everything — something that would be completely impossible.

This also applies in a more “micro” sense. I’ve always tried to be prolific — and enjoyed being prolific — but I’ve sometimes rushed a piece at the expense of thinking and writing clearly. I once wrote a film review that contained two big honking errors about the script and I still feel bad about it. A bit more patience and professionalism would have spared me that — richly merited — shame.

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3. Don’t mistake vibes for a worldview.

I have some general beliefs about the facts of life which are naturally associated with conservatism: I’m pretty pessimistic about human nature, I think that people are unequal in all sorts of ways, and I think old buildings tend to look better than new buildings. So, I used to have a lot of fun vaguely throwing around words like “tradition” and “order”. But then I realised that at least some people thought I was the kind of person who thought women shouldn’t wear trousers and all post-nineteenth century music should be banned. That was my fault. I’d been — and I should emphasise unconsciously — alluding to a deeper and more radical reactionary outlook than I actually held. These days, if I say X I try to be more clear about what X means specifically.

4. Don’t give your word so carelessly that you can’t keep it.

This is a bit of a raw one, but I recently agreed to do something and then realised that for various reasons I couldn’t do it. The thing is: I could have known that from the beginning if I had been thinking clearly. So, I had to rather ignobly and irritatingly break my word — all because I hadn’t been careful enough about it to begin with.

5. Don’t use en dashes.

I’m a convert to em dashes — and before they became associated with AI, thank you very much — and I can barely read my old pieces where I used en dashes. It’s like looking at an old haircut. They’re just ugly!

6. Don’t bang on for too long.

Okay, this isn’t one I’ve done. It’s one I’m worried about doing. It would be nice to think, as a writer, that you’ll be endlessly curious and endlessly energetic. Sadly, all of us have seen writers who have said everything they have to say, multiple times, and are going through the rhetorical motions out of habit, existential anxiety, or a desperate need to pay the rent after their other half got the house in the divorce.

I hope I’ll know when to stop before I get really dull. But I also hope that it will be a good few years before this happens.

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I’m not a car guy, but Tesla is by all accounts a fine product. So is Starlink. (The Ukrainians would have arguably lost without it.) I tend to think that leaving Earth …

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I’m kidding. Actually, I feel bad for Americans — as I’ve written — for having had to listen to James Corden, Piers Morgan and John Oliver. But that isn’t going to stop me from talking about the USA as we approach its 250th birthday.

Happy birthday, USA!

Like a lot of Europeans, I had a phase in my teenage years when I was mildly anti-American. At the time, the U.S. government had relapsed into launching catastrophic foreign wars — with, alas, Tony Blair puppyishly trailing in its wake. “Don’t wanna be an American idiot,” we sang, trying to forget that our soldiers were in Afghanistan and Iraq too.

The history of American dominance is, of course, splattered with blood. Its growth entailed ethnic cleansing and slavery (both inherited, to be fair, from Europeans). As the world’s preeminent superpower, it has launched stupid and destructive wars and propped up murderous tyrants. With its cultural and economic dominance, it has spread its ideological neuroses across the world.

So, it’s not as if the case against America is based on nothing. But it cannot be considered divorced from context. Firstly, the history of any powerful nation is going to involve bloodshed. A lot of the people who lambast US history have done so while admiring a rival superpower which launched similarly bloody wars and propped up even more murderous dictators. I suppose someone could be against superpowers in general, and I would be sympathetic, but the fact is that there are going to be superpowers however we feel about it. One might as well be against the weather. And where would you rather have lived — West Germany or the GDR? The GDR didn’t build the Berlin Wall to keep refugees out.

None of this is to defend American sins, of course. Trump’s war against Iran, for example, is not less stupid and immoral because of Putin’s war against Ukraine. But I think a lot of “anti-war” people really do think that the world was peaceful and cooperative before — KABOOM — the Americans arrived. That is pure fantasy. The imperialistic — indeed, evangelical — impulses of the USA are often lamentable and condemnable but more successful states pushing less successful states around is no American than frying food. It has just found more eye-catching ways of doing it.

Like a lot of Europeans, I’ve also had a tendency to think of the US as being a bit uncultured. On one level, this is massively unfair. You’d struggle to find a trio of European novelists — from the last 250 years, at least — to pit against Melville, Pynchon and McCarthy, or poets to pit against Stevens, Bishop and Frost, or directors to pit against Kubrick, Coppola and Lynch.

On another level, the US is the nation of Donald Trump, Joel Osteen and The Jersey Shore. It might not be fair for outside observers to associate it with that which is crass and thoughtless but it’s hardly inexplicable. Still, that’s what makes the USA so fascinating. It’s a travel writer’s cliché but it’s not unmerited here — the U.S. is a land of spectacular contradictions.

Me, I tend to love the US in its localities — the haunting folk music of Songs: Ohia, the small town weirdness of Twin Peaks and the rough and vivid tales of territory wrestling. I like that sort of cultural patchwork quality rather than the global brands in their corporate and human forms. I admire the America of Hulk Hogan but the America I love is that of Terry Funk. Yet I wouldn’t even know about all this if the US wasn’t the cultural giant that it is. (That’s glocalisation for you.) I love the small-scale humanness of the art — but what a distribution machine.

To the extent that we Europeans have suffered from Americanisation, we have to be less resentful and more inspired. We all know and love cultural products that achieve universal fame despite being distinctly and locally American, and we should aspire to achieve this ourselves. (The internet should have given us a real leg-up when it comes to distribution.)

The US might be a land of bizarre excesses and tremendous hubris — excuse my plugging of my recent piece on Hulk Hogan and America — but we could use some of its cultural confidence — not confidence in the sense of being naive or arrogant about what is achievable, of course, but confidence in the sense of at least trying to achieve something. The fact is that the optimism and innovation of the Apollo Program is not alien to the optimism and innovation that sent cruise missiles into Baghdad. This is not for one moment to excuse the latter. It is to say that to disdain the spirit of American dynamism, rather than its frequent failure to be allied with realism and respect, is to embrace stagnancy.

The US government is still doing a lot to make itself dislikeable. With White House officials reportedly preparing a $250 bill featuring the President’s face, it is easy to believe that the weekend’s celebrations will involve a great deal that is crass and thoughtless. But the USA, more than any other country, is home to great genius and great foolishness, and to great beauty and to great barbarism. To hate it, in other words, is to hate humanity — defensible, sometimes, but ultimately self-defeating.

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Obligatory shilling. This month I wrote at THE ZONE about my friend the jackdaw, factory farming, Polish pro wrestling, Dave Rubin, walking in Silesia, woke racism, Morrissey, Tony Hinchcliffe, third worldism and murderous fandoms.

I wrote for The Critic about gang culture, Henry Nowak, Russophiles, cuckooing, epistemic snobbery, grooming gangs, AI podcasts, Keir Starmer, viral Reddit posts, Steve Bray, Ben Stokes and aspiring spree killers.

For The American Conservative, I reviewed a documentary about the life and career of Hulk Hogan.

Spiritually Northern. In all likelihood, the next British PM will be Andy Burnham. He’s Northern. Have you heard that’s Northern? Well, he’ll tell you that he’s Northern. Then he’ll tell you again.

“Northern”, in a British context, implies a certain authenticity. Southern Softies are all about oat lattes and Westminster snobbery, but Northerners know what real life is like. I was raised in Bath, which is as soft and as southern as it gets, but my grandparents are proud Lancastrians. (Richard Ashcroft appears to be a distant relative.)

Granny and Grandad have maintained their Lancastrian accents throughout decades of living in South England. They still make affectionate references to chip butties and to “slutch” (a combination of wet snow and mud which I imagine carpeted Lancashire in the past). I can’t imagine them being at all pleased to be mistaken for Yorkshire folk.

That’s what’s a bit sad about the discourse around Burnham’s Northernness. Local culture has eroded in the UK to such an extent that “the North” can be framed as one place. Has no one heard of the War of the Roses?

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In hot water. I hope all my followers have made it through the unprecedented heatwave that has been travelling across Europe. On the hottest day I’ve ever known in Poland, I was at another Prime Time Wrestling event. Wrestling, sun and cold beer is among the best combinations of things I can imagine for a Saturday afternoon. Alas, the heat made it just a bit too easy to drink the aforementioned cold beer. Needless to say, next morning it was very easy to obey official advice to remain indoors.

A load of Boll’s. Uwe Boll’s Citizen Vigilante, which depicts a ruthless former US Army officer imposing Dirty Harry-style justice on migrant criminals in Europe, has been causing controversy. I’ve seen some clips and it looks like absolute bollocks — leaden dialogue, farcical action scenes, and a performance from Armie Hammer that reeks of embarrassment. When a line of armed police officers shuffled out to face Hammer’s “Michael Sanders” and his brace of machine guns, it looked so OTT that it reminded me of how horror authors like Edward Lee took fictional violence to the heights of obscene comic farce.

No, I don’t think it should be banned. But it speaks to a rather sad tendency among online right-wingers — generally American — to use the pain of women and girls to justify adolescent imaginings. Why is Elon Musk posting about “traitors” when he could have backed a genuinely professional investigation into grooming gangs? It would not have been such fun.

The snitching hour. The rapper TY appeared to have become a rare drill rap success story when he became an improbable but popular online zoologist. He was even profiled on Sky News. Alas, it isn’t easy to put gang life behind oneself. TY ended up being arrested, along with a co-defendant, for murdering Steven Morrison in 2020. Now, Chris Summers of Total Crime brings news that TY has been acquitted after testifying against his co-defendant. Well, I can’t blame him. The code of the streets is not a useful basis for civilisation. But young men liable to be drawn into gang life should be aware that if they ever want to escape decades in prison, they might have no choice but to become what they claim to hate the most.

From the desk. This month I finished the first draft of a very short book and the first draft of a very short play. I’m a bit nervous about revisiting them, in case they are shit, but I’m glad to be experimenting with my work. The fact is that I can’t bang on about how we have to be more innovative and creative in the face of AI while only writing neat little opinion columns.

Rewatching the English. Onto some reading. Fred Sculthorp reflects on Englishness:

I’m not entirely sure I always recognise her subject of study. Reading this book in 2026 can sometimes feel like watching a family film of a once beloved relative who now has increasingly violent dementia.

The thinness of red tape. Chris Bayliss considers the regulatory state:

The regulators and price cappers have no responsibility under the legislation to ensure that the service itself is provided; merely to ensure that if it is done, it is only done within certain parameters. It is not hard to see how this ends up as a war of attrition, pitting the best against the good — a country without a reliable ambulance service, in which it is still considered intolerable for the most basic assistance to be provided by a person without the right training.

Peace and streets. Ed West ponders the social order:

If the government wishes to reduce the risk of further riots, it might focus less on social media and more on a criminal justice system that allows repeat offenders their freedom. The disconnect between the way the British state regards political offences, and the way it treats ordinary crime, has become vast, and characteristic of authoritarian regimes whose primary purpose is self-preservation.

The roots of Carlsonism. Franz Pokorny considers Tucker Carlson:

The roux in this multicultural slosh was politics, and nothing mixed the juices together like antisemitism. Where once ‘the socialism of fools’ forged bonds of unlikely solidarity between ethnic artisans and German clerks, today the Palestinian cause stitches together an equally awkward patchwork of metropolitan liberals and Mirpuri patriarchs, while in the youthful underbelly of America’s conservative movement, something closer to the old Viennese antisemitic coalition is taking shape.

Sex wars, what are they good for? Felice Basbøll writes in praise of inter-sex rhetorical disputation:

Mailer might have had a patronising tone, but he respected the female intellect enough to give the “ladies” a piece of his mind. The only thing worse than someone proving you wrong is someone not respecting you enough to try. All we can ask for is some intellectual honesty — as Mailer and Greer prove, the sexual tension will come naturally.

Have a lovely month!

Ben

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Well, be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. I feel awful for the German industrial metal band KMFDM, which has found a niche fanbase among mass shooters.

Eric Ha…

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I take a seat on a bench that swings wildly upwards if too much weight is applied to either end. Excited children, hairy men in WWE shirts and grizzled babcie, among others, are eating slices of pizza or drinking bottled beer. A bespectacled announcer steps nervously into the ring. The event has an endearing ramshackle feel.

Five minutes later, I am howling in outrage as the British veteran Johnny Storm is robbed of victory. It might as well be Las Vegas after all.

Polish pro wrestling does not have the millions of fans, and billions of dollars, of American pro wrestling but the audience makes up for it with enthusiasm. Heroic “babyfaces” are greeted with rhapsodic cheers. Villainous “heels” are showered with boos. The fans know all the wrestlers and their catchphrases. Even the girl auctioning signed shirts appears to be beloved.

Professional wrestling does not have the believability that it once did, in an age before mass media exposed the tricks of trade. Watching live, though, you can suspend your disbelief. As the egomaniacal Nano Lopez hammers a chair into the back of the plucky local boy Daniel Razor, while blood dribbles down Razor’s face, the audience snarls with indignation. So do I.

A few weeks earlier, in Wrocław, I had stood in a dark room in the bowels of a cavernous nightclub, as rabid fans of Maniac Pro Wrestling exhorted the host of the event to show his ass. He tore off his jacket to reveal a shirt that bore a pair of cartoon buttocks. The crowd erupted.

With an increasingly prosperous Poland creeping towards membership of the G20 — a scenario that would have seemed fantastically implausible two decades ago — people have more money for entertainment. Much of this entertainment, predictably, has been inspired by American cultural products. From reality TV to horror films, Polish pop culture has adopted tropes from U.S. media. Polish professional wrestling is no exception. There are similar archetypes, similar storylines and even some of the same slogans (“Leeeeet’s get ready to ruuuuumble!”).

Professional wrestling was not born in the United States, but Americans have spread it around the world. The unprecedented success of World Wrestling Entertainment led to market dominance in the US. Its ultimate global reach sent spores of inspiration across the planet.

WWE has toured everywhere from Europe to India. Next year, controversially, Wrestlemania will take place in Riyadh, which marks the next step in the economically fruitful if morally dubious relationship between the organisation and the Saudis. Now, independent wrestling promotions have emerged everywhere from Poland to Uganda, where Soft Ground Wrestling has become something of an internet sensation thanks to wrestlers hurling each other across the mud. American admirers crowdfunded to get SGW a ring.

A triumph of Americanisation? To some extent. But look closer and local particularities emerge. At Maniac Zone Wrestling, the most hated wrestlers are a pair of shaven headed heels who have adopted the persona of football hooligans. It is not their thuggishness that makes them truly hated, though — it is the fact that they represent Legia Warszawa. At Prime Time Wrestling, the mysterious masked wrestler Whiteblade reveals his true heinousness by choking a wrestler with a scarf that bears the colours of the Polish flag. One of my favourite acts of the night was a tag team called the Forest Brothers — a pair of hulking ursine men you can imagine roaming the Bieszczady Mountains in search of prey.

There is, sometimes, no clear distinction between the universal and the specific. At its best, culture can take global inspiration while being locally rooted. This is true in the world of poems and novels and it is true in the world of armdrags and powerbombs. Economists call this “glocalization”, and as much as it can be as superficial as McDonald’s serving teriyaki burgers in Japan, it can also mean infusing that which has universal appeal — like, say, theatrical displays of violence — with the colours of one’s home.

Polish professional wrestling (“Po wrestling”?) might be a niche subculture but it seethes with ambition. Prime Time Wrestling, which was formed in 2021, has hosted international stars like Santino Marella, Matt Sydal and, most impressively, Mercedes Moné, a former champion in World Wrestling Entertainment and its rival All Elite Wrestling.

Polish pro wrestling is heavily decentralised, with various promotions across the country. This has led to real-world disputes, with PTW, for example, facing an exodus of talent in 2024 amid financial and creative disagreements. On the bright side, this leads to brand loyalty that bigger and richer promotions would love to have. In Wrocław, dedicated “Maniacy” viciously insult wrestlers from rival companies. (Hardcore fans are also touchingly solicitous towards viewers, like me, for whom it is their first MZW show.) As I approach the Prime Time Wrestling event, meanwhile, the fields around the village of Kozłow echo with chants of “PTW!”

There is no shortage of genuine talent in the Polish scene. At MZW, Jakub, who once performed in PTW as Axel Fox, is bursting with charisma — a heel with as hateable a smirk as you will ever see. At PTW, Spartan is the epitome of a conquering champion — a giant man with an aura of invincibility. Bart Petro is a babyface who reminds me of an old era of British wrestling — a working class hero with a body you can imagine being formed by manual labour rather than steroids and bicep curls.

True, some of the wrestling can be sloppy. True, some of the doormen look more fearsome than most of the guys in the ring. But the passion and dedication are inspiring. These wrestlers are not making serious money. The chance of making serious money is minimal. But they very obviously love what they do, and their training, and their dreaming, and their willingness to risk their health to entertain the audience is undeniable. From the lighting, to the music, to the t-shirts, an insane amount of effort has also been committed to the production, including by people who get none of the viewers’ acclaim.

Who knows. There have been successful Polish pro wrestlers. As far back as the 1970s, Ivan Putski, “The Polish Hammer”, was intimidating American audiences. Polish promoters can also take inspiration from the improbable success of Scotland’s Insane Championship Wrestling, which went from being a dream in a Glasgow flat to putting on stadium shows, working with WWE, and helping to launch the careers of global stars like Grado, Joe Hendry and, especially, former WWE champion Drew McIntyre.

These are rare success stories in an industry where promotions live more precarious lives than BASE jumpers. Still, culture, and business, are all about taking risks. The Polish economy has risen on the back of entrepreneurial dynamism — on the sort of ambition, as well as hard work, that commits people, for example, to thinking that an idea for parcel lockers might inspire a company, InPost, that has transformed logistics across Europe. Polish culture needs that sort of bold commitment to making the unlikely real, and it shines through the men and women who swagger out of their locker rooms as if they are in stadiums and not in pubs, clubs and restaurants. Here, they are stars however many people know it.

Of course, in entertainment being successful is not just about making a profit. It is about making people happy. In Wrocław, the MZW show ends in triumph for a villainous heel group, but the Maniacy are soon cheerfully discussing the event over cigarettes. In Kozłow, as the crowd heads out towards the fields, in a haze of blood-sated satisfaction, I hear one family talking in English with American accents. I don’t think they were disappointed to have missed Wrestlemania.

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Not me. I’m not a very virtuous person at all.

I’m not trying to do some lame performative self-deprecation thing here. I’m not an absolutely terrible person. But I can be very careless and distracted, and very dense when it comes t…

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“Through sparrow black wind,” sings Molina:

A dead crow calls out to his wing
We were lightning across the whole world
We were lightning

Go and listen to it. This live vers…

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