Late July, hot and humid, I set out for Belfast via the small Shropshire town of Wem. Why Wem? Well, I’m working on a book about William Hazlitt, and feel the need to walk some of the...
Upstairs Last year I was going downstairs, now I’m going upstairs. Up there is a rocking horse in red velvet. I’ll dust him off with a crow’s wing, then I’ll shake the...
Edmund White has always struggled between appeasing the gods of his art and paying off the princelings of politics. Endearingly, and sometimes infuriatingly, he insists on doing both, and the...
‘All stories have in them the seed of all other stories: any story, if continued long enough, becomes other stories,’ declares a female hermit who is the Ur-storyteller in this Indian...
One of the most convincing inclusions in Granta’s list of the 20 best young British novelists, A.L. Kennedy has composed a distinctive voice out of youth and national identity. She was born...
It is impossible for the lover of Jane Austen – and lover is the operative word here – to have anything but mixed feelings about Austen’s older sister Cassandra. On one hand, we...
A Family Wireless You switch it on, pour out a cup of tea, drink it, and finally sounds of outer space clearing its throat blow from the vizored face; pause; then the swelling voice of history refills...
For Don Paterson He preferred his glass eye to be of itself, vitreous not ocular or even optically convincing. Without pupil or iris, allowed to risk its stubbornly fluid nature, the blue held...
Biography Who turned the page? When I went out last night his Life was left wide-open, halfway through, in lamplight on my desk: The Middle Years. Now look at him. Who turned the page? Steps...
monstrum: any occurrence out of the ordinary course of nature supposed to indicate the will of the gods, a marvel. These back streets are an oven, I’m sweating like a fountain – my...
Not only one of the (many) unread classics, Don Quixote is a book almost no one seems to have any intention of reading. People don’t feel bad about ignoring it, don’t need to pretend...
‘It is obviously the same person.’ The words of Lady Bracknell, one of the wisest characters in English literature, may eventually be echoed by readers when and if they have worked...
This is Heinrich Böll’s apprentice novel, written between 1949 and 1951. Since Friedrich Middelhauve, who published his stories, was unwilling to bring out the novel, Böll put it...
Pop music in Britain is almost forty years old. By 1957 ‘Rock around the Clock’ had opened a generation gap, London-based record labels like EMI, Decca and Pye had started to refine...
Never filmed, he was photographed only once, Looking up startled into the death-trap flash Like a threatened life-form. Still underlining his copybook one-word message With the flourish that...
Badger After the midnight crash of bins, Our neighbour’s dog barking And our neighbour shouting I remembered the hedgehog We found last month Unzipped in the long grass. Otter If I were to...
Cornucopia It lies on his thigh, dribbling, dead to the world. She kisses him, she’s not finished yet; she squeezes the limp flesh like a pastry cook between her fingers. He groans....
When Bookering last year I found most of the novels fitted into one of two categories, which I began to think of as ‘Conscious Modern’ and ‘Pattern Naive’. Pattern Naive,...