Reticulation 
Frank Kermode
- The Wreck of the 'Abergavenny' by Alethea Hayter
There has of late been a vogue for what is sometimes called ‘micrh-history’: the historian chooses some anecdote, some occurrence remote from the mainstream of historical writing, and from it deduces an entire culture, the conflicts or negotiations of power within a whole historical community. Alethea Hayter deals with a single event, focusing on a particular moment in history, but she is not a new or micro-historian and is innocent of Foucauldian or any other theoretical ambitions. Nevertheless she explores her subject in such depth that she really does illuminate the culture and society of her chosen moment.
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Frank Kermode’s books include The Sense of an Ending and The Uses of Error.
Other articles by this contributor:
Nothing for Ever and Ever · Housman’s Pleasures
No Tricks · Raymond Carver
Here she is · Zadie Smith
Maximum Assistance from Good Cooking, Good Clothes, Good Drink · Auden’s Shakespeare
Who has the gall? · Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
First Pitch · Marianne Moore
At Tate Britain · William Blake
‘Disgusting’ · Frank Kermode remembers William Empson
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