Diary

Ian Hamilton

‘Australia?’ There was a punishing stress on the second syllable and the tone was one of idle disbelief: ‘But why?’ This was over seven years ago. I had just been invited to a literary festival in Adelaide; no fee, but they’d pay my Qantas. It seemed to me an Opportunity Not to be Missed. In the week or so before I set off, however, almost everybody I bumped into (including at least one Australian) seemed to think that I’d gone off my head. Nobody, I was told, went to Australia just for the sake of Going to Australia. I must be mad. Or was I ‘up to something’?

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[*] Clive James’s Poem of the Year, which appeared in instalments on this page, will be published on 24 November (Cape, 79 pp., £5.50, 0 224 02961 4).

[†] An Open Letter by Seamus Heaney. Field Day Pamphlet No 2, 14pp., Irish £2.45, 16 Setpember, 0 946755 01 9.