Henry James writes of a very grand lady that she had ‘an air of keeping, at every moment, every advantage’. Paradoxically, the same would be true of the literary personality of Elias...
Bony skeletons in coffinwood, some of them bad, some of them good, all of them silent, stretched out straight, hope to get in at Heaven’s Gate. Some had breasts to drive men wild or (more...
Dear Britain, Merry Christmas! If I may Presume on your attention for the space Of one broadsheet, I’d simply like to say How pleased I am to see your homely face Perked up and looking...
Just why the publication of this expensive book should have merited a subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council is not obvious. Much of the text has the disjointed irrelevance of the Walrus talking...
Was Hamlet present at Bruno’s lectures before giving up University as a job-lot of scoundrels and charlatans, leaving Wittenberg for a court grown purulent? He found himself unemployed, at...
1980 was certainly the year of the Poles. With Solidarity Poland was making history, for once without tragedy, or at least not immediate tragedy. The first-ever Polish pope was riding in triumph...
The title page of this book tells us that it is ‘published to commemorate the centenary of Sir Charles Tennyson, the poet’s grandson and biographer, born 8 November 1879, died 22 June...
This is no country for young women – the old on one another’s arms, ice in the air, etcetera ... Cheap-rate, off-peak, out-of-season, they come in charabancs – coaches too new a...
Two middle-class men talking. Call them Charles and Henry. CHARLES: And did you have to go through that tedious charade, sexual intercourse? HENRY: (enthusiastically) Oh yes. From A to Z....
One of John Osborne’s Thoughts for 1954: ‘The urge to please above all. I don’t have it and can’t achieve it. A small thing but more or less mine own.’ This book...
In February 1948 André Gide received an uncharacteristically triumphant letter from his English translator. Used to hearing about Gide’s exploits, she now had, girlishly, ‘a...
This volume represents more than forty years work by one of the most earnestly devoted and intelligent of our poets. Accordingly it must be considered deliberately, and at some length....
Born in 1838, Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, Comte de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam came of an illustrious Breton line, latterly more distinguished for its poverty and eccentricity. His...
Stevie Smith said that she was straightforward, but not simple, which is a version of not waving but drowning. She presented to the world the face which is invented when reticence goes over to...
Now the maid, having set the plates for breakfast, puts out the light and climbs down to her cot. Now the mouse drops to the pantry floor and begins to chew. Now the beetle with his camphor wings...
Poets often mature earlier than novelists; behind the romantic image of young poetic genius lies a clearly identifiable pattern whereby all but the greatest poets write their best work before the...
It is a curious thing that while so many critics are busy telling each other that literature is a linguistic game, that novels are purely formal structures and that their pretensions to represent...
We came where the salmon were so many So steady, so spaced, so far-aimed On their inner map, England could add Only the sooty twilight of South Yorkshire Hung with the drumming drift of...