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“... internal as a literary practice. Compared to Gray’s tapestry, this work is mere blanket-stitch. Edward Fenton’s promising first novel, Scorched Earth, is light and frothy and contains no carcinogenic preservatives, emulsifiers or stabilisers. It recounts ten days in the lives of four ideologically sound kids surviving on the dole in London. Their ...”

“... was at this inn, on the evening of 3 May 1591, that the English alchemist, clairvoyant and con-man Edward Kelley was arrested by officers of Emperor Rudolf II. At the time of his arrest Kelley was an internationally famous figure, but thereafter the story grows confused: he disappears from view into the dungeons of 16th-century Bohemia. News of his death ...”

“... is this odd fish?’ Severn also asked, and Crane’s book is an attempt to answer that question. Edward John Trelawny was born in 1792 and died in 1881. In his later years he was a legendary figure, farouche and craggy, a solitary survivor from an epoch which already seemed fabulously remote: here, living on deep into the later Victorian age was a man who ...”

“... imperialism. I thought very little about him until around ten years ago, when my friend James Fenton, the poet, said that on a trip to South Korea he had been approached by a Korean professor who asked him if it was true that ‘ck’ in the name ‘Cockburn’ was not pronounced. When James asked him why he was interested the professor explained that he ...”

“... Auden said in an interview a few months before he died. Thanks to the magnificent efforts of Edward Mendelson, it’s now all here: prose, plays, libretti and, finally, the poems, coming to just over 7500 pages all told. Sizing up these volumes, one might take courage from a line in ‘The Labyrinth’: ‘Assume this maze has got a plan.’ Many maps ...”

“... opposition to the enclosure of local common land. In 1864, a disturbing letter arrived for John Edward Dorington, lord of the manor, and his son: you are robing the working class of the Parish and their offsprings for ever in fact you are not Gentlemen but robbers and vagabonds, however if it is enclosed you shall never receive any benefit thereby as ...”

“... been taken on board in Britain: they engage with a post-Poundian poetic tradition (Charles Olson, Edward Dorn, Robert Duncan, George Oppen) of a kind that gives modern American poetry its variety and experimentalism. Gunn and Davie are included in both anthologies, but to read their collected poems (the next step after reading Davie’s superb ‘Time ...”

“... in Bodley’s strongroom on the next shelf to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.’ 17 April. George Fenton comes round with a present, an overcoat from John Pearce, the fashionable tailor in Meard Street who specialises in remaking or renovating old clothes. The coat is French, long, black and once having had an astrakhan collar. It’s a lovely thing, but what ...”

“... the latest leaflet, or procuring another drink. And there were the Americans. I remember James Fenton noticing how they would cluster a little closer together and talk in a fashion slightly more intense. Mainly Rhodes or Fulbright scholars, they had come from every state of the union with what amounted to a free pass. The Yanks of Oxford were accustomed to ...”

“... its provenance’, but never quite decides what it does seek to be. Judicious selections from Edward Taylor and Anne Bradstreet extend the anthology’s reach beyond what Ricks terms ‘our precious stones from Land’s End to John o’Groats, leave alone the emerald of Ireland’. On the other hand, the editorial policy excludes ‘the British Empire or ...”

“... to answer: ‘Yes, but!’ Many of us who enjoy formal versification and who rejoice with James Fenton that Auden cleared our minds of cant and gave us back our freedom to range the long catalogue of traditional poetic tropes are still unhappy at James’s over-narrow raiding of the past. John Frederick Nims pointed out that you can view the durable iambics ...”

“... Arms. The desire for combat is paramount. ‘Not everyone feels such things so intensely,’ James Fenton writes in his introduction to the Everyman edition of the Collected Stories. Many are simply relieved not to have to fight. But the real test for someone of Hemingway’s cast of mind is: to serve in war as a soldier under military discipline. Hemingway ...”

“... makeshift coathanger he has rigged up over the bath in order to dry his anorak.14 January. George Fenton tells me of a memorial service he’s been to at St Marylebone Parish Church for Maurice Murphy, the principal trumpet of the LSO, who did the opening trumpet solo in the music for Star Wars. The service due to kick off at 11.30, George arrives with ten ...”

“... is a close similarity between Wordsworth’s manifesto in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, and Edward Marsh introducing the first Georgian anthology in 1912 with the statement that ‘English poetry is once again putting on a new strength and beauty.’ The difference is that Wordsworth really was heralding a new era of sensibility, as Ezra Pound was to do ...”

“... the police have been found guilty and punished. Or even sacked. 20 June. Three jokes from George Fenton. 1. Man has bad pains in his bum. Friend says it’s piles so he applies various creams which do no good. Another friend says: ‘No, creams are useless. What you want to do is have a cup of tea then take the tea leaves and put them up your arse. It’s ...”