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“... always true to some extent of literary criticism. For Tolkien fans, as for fans of Joyce or Beckett, the sterility of the exercise is surely part of the appeal.1The big man of Tolkien criticism is Tom Shippey, who has now written two books on the topic. Like Tolkien, he is English and a philologist by background – ‘ideally suited to write about his ...”

“... matter. He only cares about power and its total tool, propaganda. He is known even to have used Beckett’s plays, to have said that Waiting for Godot showed the kind of capitalist-induced misery you’ll never find in Cuba now. Godot forbids. With all its political infirmities, and there were many, travellers to Cuba were surprised at what they saw. Even ...”

“... as to what to read and had not hesitated to say when he thought she was not ready for a book yet. Beckett, for instance, he had kept from her for a long while and Nabokov and it was only gradually he had introduced her to Philip Roth (with Portnoy’s Complaint quite late on in the sequence). More and more, though, she had read what she fancied and Norman had ...”