Reports from the Not Too Distant Canon 
Frank Kermode
This book is a sequence or collection of poems and other things concerning events in Europe in the period between the Treaty of Versailles and, broadly speaking, the Battle of Britain. Some of the events and personalities, like the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno, are considerately annotated, but others, some of them much more obscure than these, are not. Consequently the reader’s share, as Henry James called it, is quite half; or, to put it another way, unless you are a polymathic historian with some knowledge of literature you will need to do quite a lot of research to figure out what Paulin is doing.
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Frank Kermode’s books include The Sense of an Ending and The Uses of Error.
Other articles by this contributor:
‘Disgusting’ · Frank Kermode remembers William Empson
Point of View · Atonement by Ian McEwan
Who has the gall? · Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Here she is · Zadie Smith
Writing about Shakespeare · Frank Kermode has his say
Nothing for Ever and Ever · Housman’s Pleasures
Our Muddy Vesture · Frank Kermode watches Pacino’s Merchant of Venice
Retripotent · B. S. Johnson
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