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“... a nation.’ But nationality still mattered: Seamus Heaney’s reaction to his inclusion in Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion’s 1982 Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry was ‘My passport’s green.’ Heaney, preoccupied with ‘the government of the tongue’, was drawn into the arguments about cultural identity, language, gender and inclusiveness ...”

“... Cromwell’, the narrator will let rip with a great urban set-piece, like something out of Arthur Morrison, Jack London or George Gissing: a bare-knuckle boxing contest (‘happy unhealthy faces glowing with meaty grease, panatella smoke’), breakfast in a Formica-table caff, a phantasmagoric binge in a Tufnell Hill windmill – which becomes an encore for ...”

“... my diary:3 March 1986A commemorative programme for Larkin at Riverside Studios, arranged by Blake Morrison. Arrive late as there is heavy rain and the traffic solid, nearly two hours to get from Camden Town to Hammersmith. I am to read with Pinter, who has the beginnings of a moustache he is growing in order to play Goldberg in a TV production of The Birthday ...”

“... of the 180-acre Stratford site, for which privilege it paid £140 million. The brothers David and Simon Reuben, who held a 50 per cent stake in the site, were put under some pressure to sell out. Ken Livingstone, with characteristic tact, invited the Indian-born siblings to ‘go back to Iran and try their luck with the ayatollahs’. City Hall and the ...”

“... woman’s flat’: ‘I washed my hands and the smell lasted for two days.’At the end of 1960 Simon Raven wrote a remarkable piece for Encounter on male prostitutes in London, distinguishing five types with the alert eye of a Mayhew addressing an undescribed trade. He deduces that all come from homes where they were unwanted or misunderstood. There are ...”