Let’s begin with ‘Let’s begin with the tea towel.’ Thus Professor Curl Skidmore, narrator of C.K. Stead’s All Visitors Ashore, announcing his presence in a text...
The fourth volume of the Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy opens with a recommendation for Mr Harry Pouncy, ‘Lecturer and Entertainer’, of Dorchester, apparently with a view to his...
There’s news about oil on Radio Eireann: Exxon’s profits are up 30 per cent. And the Pope will not, it now appears, visit the North. Too many problems of security. I prefer the news...
‘We’re certain it must be his,’ the phone call had said. The day was hot. You could see the excavator from a mile away as it crouched on the flatland, a giant locust of yellow...
A few weeks ago I gave a lecture at Reading, to a Conference of Higher Education Teachers of English. My visit was brief, but long enough to reinforce my sense that teaching English has become a...
I step into the autumn morning like a first Communicant and ride off down the lane, singing. Across the frosty fields someone is mending fences knock knock knock and a twig that’s caught in...
The tradition of the Commedia del’Arte is apparent in all three of these novels. A repertory company of stock characters is presented to an audience already familiar with many of the masks,...
This is not, as the title might at first suggest, a critical biography, but a collection of miscellaneous essays by MacCarthy, all of which have been collected before, and a memoir by Lord David...
My parcel was delivered to the college Thoroughly packaged, like an only child ... I tear my father’s beautifully-written note (Please acknowledge receipt, Love Mum & Dad) Then fold the...
Loder, the Fifth Form Cad, is being blackmailed by Hogg, the new School Butler: unless Loder gives Hogg £10, Hogg will go to the Head and report Loder for smoking and drinking in the Saloon...
Dostoevsky in the 1840s, a caustic and iconoclastic rising star, was the subject of Joseph Frank’s first volume of biography and critique, The Seeds of Revolt. This volume stood out from...
The Party in the Woods I Each fly a little Isis, A transformer, buzzing; The trees worried by their wolf, The wind. The spring of water, An almost silent work, continuing Under the threshold of...
This is the second and final volume of Hilary Spurling’s biography of I. Compton-Burnett, and it comes to us ten years after the first. During this interval has Mrs Spurling been attending...
When poets decide to write in prose, and a fortiori to undertake so substantial a piece of prose writing as a novel, they are apt to leave unmistakable traces of their poetic craft. Indeed a...
As I begin to write this, innumerable other reviews are being born. Some are being word-processed in paper-free offices, others handwritten in the Club lounges of intercontinental jets and others...
They are not writing the letters, they are looking at Peter’s yellow hat and red socks. (Exercise 3) Naturally this requires their full attention: the hat, a small but rakish panama...
My gesture towards Finnegans Wake is deliberate. Ronald Bush, T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style The gesture towards Finnegans Wake was deliberate. It was not accidental. Years of...
On Good Friday 1984, I found myself laying a wreath at the Monument to the Unknown Soldier in Baghdad. This was to me extraordinary. I belong to the Church of England and have no wish to take...