Bernard O’Donoghue

Bernard O’Donoghue teaches medieval English at Wadham College, Oxford. His latest book of poems is Outliving.

Letter

Reckless

28 September 1989

Charles Monteith’s letter (Letters, 23 November) mildly castigating your testy footnote to Richard Murphy’s protest (Letters, 26 October) came as a relief and made the essential point: writers should be at liberty to use whatever words they like and readers can make it their business to use the dictionary to find out their meanings. Your rather more craven comment on Monteith’s ‘interesting’...

It must feel odd – and more than a bit unsettling – to realise that sooner or later, perhaps in your lifetime, somebody will write your biography. Biographers can get lives badly...

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The survival of poetry, especially if written before the invention of print, has often been a matter of luck or accident. Consigned to caves in the deserts of the Middle East, it might be...

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