James Fenton

James Fenton theatre critic of the Sunday Times.

Letter
Wae a’ the room ye hae gien tae oor owl tongue – an we’re saerious gled o it – A wunther if a boady micht luck tae gie it a wee airin an at the sametim mak adae at strechtin oot twarthy metthers?In thon ither scrape A writ ye – for the geg, maistly – A wuz chakkin Tam Palyin (as iz yins wud ca him) for gan wrang wae burd names (Letthers, 5 Uptober). Noo Tam’s harly the soart tae tak snool,...

Not What Anybody Says: James Fenton

Michael Wood, 13 September 2012

One of the great attractions of James Fenton’s verse is the way it manages so often to be both plain and cryptic at once. It urges us to think about what we can’t quite know, and it...

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Ever so comfy

James Wood, 24 March 1994

Every handful of John Updike’s silver has its square coin, its bad penny, its fake. This exquisitely careful writer tends to relax into flamboyance: it is the verbal equivalent of...

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Neil Corcoran confronts the new recklessness

Neil Corcoran, 28 September 1989

For a writer who several years ago published a ‘Manifesto Against Manifestoes’, James Fenton has published his fair share of manifestoes, including a disguised one for a...

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Out of the blue

Mark Ford, 10 December 1987

So characteristic of Paul Muldoon’s poetry as to be almost a hallmark is the moment, unnerving and exciting in about equal measures, when his speaker is suddenly revealed to himself as...

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Hell on Earth

Stephen Haggard, 8 January 1987

The bloodiness of the events of the Seventies in Cambodia, and the desperate nature of the refugee exodus, have been of such monstrous proportions as to hinder the emergence of detailed accounts...

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We shall not be moved

John Bayley, 2 February 1984

There remains a most decided difference – indeed it grows wider every year – between what Philip Larkin calls ‘being a writer’, or ‘being a poet’, and managing...

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Fenton makes a hit

Blake Morrison, 10 January 1983

No one can have been more surprised than James Fenton that In Memory of War turned out to be one of the most acclaimed books of 1982. A year ago, used to being told by reviewers that he was a...

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Best Things

Alan Hollinghurst, 20 August 1981

By and large we are interested in the thoughts, opinions and intentions of writers we are interested in, and by and large writers are keen to express these things in reviews, essays and memoirs...

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