Physical and spiritual decay
The most striking thing about Piers Paul Read’s early novels was their characters’ susceptibility to physical decay. The most striking…
View ArticleActing strange
Reviewing Lindsay Clarke’s Whitbread-winning The Chymical Wedding a small matter of 20 years ago, and noting its free and easy…
View ArticleDoomed to disillusion
The Forgotten Waltz is one of those densely recapitulative novels that seek to interpret emotional crack-up from the angle of…
View ArticleNowhere to go but down
I am just old enough to remember the terrific fuss that was made about the first Scots literary renaissance when…
View ArticleThe thrill of the chase
Desc: Students stand together in a courtyard at Emmanuel College. Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, Great Britain. (Date: 1/4/1946) • Credit: [ The Art Archive / B. Anthony Stewart / NGS Image...
View ArticleA hint of the numinous
October 1984: Firemen inspect the shell of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, destroyed by an IRA sleeper bomb during the recent Conservative Party Conference. (Photo by Express/Express/Getty Images)
View ArticleCats, curates and cardigans
English novelist and writer, Barbara Pym (1913-1980) pictured at the front door of Barn Cottage in the village of Finstock, Oxfordshire on 8th November 1979. (Photo by United News/Popperfoto/Getty Images)
View ArticleSpirits of the Blitz
24th May 1941: Devastated buildings around St Paul's Cathedral, London, after an air raid during the Blitz. (Photo by J. A. Hampton/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)
View ArticleA woman of some importance
Searching for a 12-month stretch in the life of Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923–2013) that might illuminate the kind of person…
View ArticleHis own worst enemy
One fail-safe test of a writer’s reputation is to see how many times his or her books get taken out…
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