Thoughts about Alan While Waiting for Harold by Simon Gray, the author of the celebrated and widely-acclaimed The Smoking Diaries returns to print with a tender, affecting, and of course funny account of his friendship with Alan Bates, written as he waits in Barbados for Harold Pinter to turn up. Plus: Said Sayrafiezadeh on his father's irritating dreams of human perfection, Ismail Kadare at the Great Wall of China (and Life), Simon Garfield on the addictive, beautiful and costly errors of the postage stamp, The Weather Where We Are - bulletins on our changing climate from Margaret Atwood, John Borneman, Urvashi Butalia, James Hamilton-Paterson, Thomas Keneally, James Lasdun, Javier Reverte and Rodrigo Rey-Rosa. New fiction from Karen E. Bender, Geoff Dyer, Gilad Evron and Frederic Tuten.