“... wants the best for Scotland, but if he’s wrong, he threatens to destroy more Scottish jobs than Margaret Thatcher, to ruin more pension plans than Robert Maxwell. Colin Kidd In an ideal world a fully independent Scotland might be a better place than the quasi-independent state it is now, but why is almost impossible to see given the evasions and silences ... ”
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The Reviewer’s Song
Andrew O’Hagan: Mailer’s Last Punch, 7 November 2013
Norman Mailer: A Double Life
by J. Michael Lennon.
Simon and Schuster, 947 pp., £30, November 2013,978 1 84737 672 5 Show More
by J. Michael Lennon.
Simon and Schuster, 947 pp., £30, November 2013,
“... most machines, he agreed to some long-distance signing of books using a strange device invented by Margaret Atwood called the Longpen, where he signed them on a tablet and a mechanical arm in Edinburgh followed his scrawl. He said he had fond memories of Edinburgh, having taken part in a famous literary scrap organised there in 1962 by John Calder. I loved ... ”
‘A Naughty House’
Charles Nicholl: Shakespeare’s Landlord, 24 June 2010
“... he was a supplier of headgear à la mode to an upmarket clientele which had at one time included King James’s fashion-mad consort, Queen Anne, and he was – not least – a familiar acquaintance of Shakespeare. A rather respectable figure, it may seem from this summary, an immigrant success story, though there is also some evidence to suggest ... ”
Browning Versions
Barbara Everett, 4 August 1983
Robert Browning: A Life within Life
by Donald Thomas.
Weidenfeld, 334 pp., £12.95, August 1982,0 297 78092 1 Show More
by Donald Thomas.
Weidenfeld, 334 pp., £12.95, August 1982,
The Elusive Self in the Poetry of Robert Browning
by Constance Hassett.
Ohio, 186 pp., £17, December 1982,0 8214 0629 9 Show More
by Constance Hassett.
Ohio, 186 pp., £17, December 1982,
The Complete Works of Robert Browning. Vol. V
edited by Roma King.
Ohio, 395 pp., £29.75, July 1981,9780821402207 Show More
edited by Roma King.
Ohio, 395 pp., £29.75, July 1981,
The Poetical Works of Robert Browning: Vol. I
edited by Ian Jack and Margaret Smith.
Oxford, 543 pp., £45, April 1983,0 19 811893 7 Show More
edited by Ian Jack and Margaret Smith.
Oxford, 543 pp., £45, April 1983,
Robert Browning: The Poems
edited by John Pettigrew and Thomas Collins.
Yale/Penguin, 1191 pp., £26, January 1982,0 300 02675 7 Show More
edited by John Pettigrew and Thomas Collins.
Yale/Penguin, 1191 pp., £26, January 1982,
Robert Browning: ‘The Ring and the Book’
edited by Richard Altick.
Yale/Penguin, 707 pp., £21, May 1981,0 300 02677 3 Show More
edited by Richard Altick.
Yale/Penguin, 707 pp., £21, May 1981,
“... first volume of the Ohio University Press Browning, under the general editorship of Roma King Jr; the most recent volume brings the reader from ‘A Soul’s Tragedy’ to the first volume of Men and Women. This fifth volume incorporates some changes in editorial policy and personnel which reflect the rough reception the Ohio Browning has ... ”
In Hyperspace
Fredric Jameson, 10 September 2015
Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative
by David Wittenberg.
Fordham, 288 pp., £18.99, March 2013,978 0 8232 4997 8 Show More
by David Wittenberg.
Fordham, 288 pp., £18.99, March 2013,
“... Cormac McCarthy and Jonathan Lethem are not of the same genre as Philip K. Dick, however long Margaret Atwood managed to ‘pass’. Indeed, the solution may actually be a rather simple one, namely that modernism is not a genre, while SF emphatically is – and this opens up questions of an appeal to different reading publics, as well as their respective ... ”
Wedded to the Absolute
Ferdinand Mount: Enoch Powell, 26 September 2019
Enoch Powell: Politics and Ideas in Modern Britain
by Paul Corthorn.
Oxford, 233 pp., £20, August 2019,978 0 19 874714 7 Show More
by Paul Corthorn.
Oxford, 233 pp., £20, August 2019,
“... his period in Northern Ireland (he remained the Ulster Unionist MP for South Down until 1987), Margaret Thatcher took care to stay on friendly terms with Powell, partly out of a certain sympathy with his views and partly because his support, even when it was tacit, could do her no harm, but she never made any move to tempt him back into the Tory fold, for ... ”
Unsluggardised
Charles Nicholl: ‘The Shakespeare Circle’, 19 May 2016
The Shakespeare Circle: An Alternative Biography
edited by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells.
Cambridge, 358 pp., £18.99, October 2015,978 1 107 69909 0 Show More
edited by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells.
Cambridge, 358 pp., £18.99, October 2015,
“... father, restoration hang Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss Repair those violent harms. (King Lear, IV.vii) It is often said that Susanna was Shakespeare’s favourite daughter, and that Judith – who signed her name with an awkward little mark like two pigtails, who was still a spinster at the age of 30 – was always second best. This is ... ”
Little England
Patrick Wright: The view through a bus window, 7 September 2006
Great British Bus Journeys: Travels through Unfamous Places
by David McKie.
Atlantic, 359 pp., £16.99, March 2006,1 84354 132 7 Show More
by David McKie.
Atlantic, 359 pp., £16.99, March 2006,
“... same genre as the rumour – even David McKie has been unable to turn up a precise source – that Margaret Thatcher once remarked that anyone who rode a bus after reaching the age of 26 was a failure. It also reminded me of a story Ken Livingstone liked to recite when he was leader of the GLC. One day, he had found himself taking the Underground in the ... ”
A Car of One’s Own
Andrew O’Hagan: Chariots of Desire, 11 June 2009
“... he also said that the Bank of England was ‘in pole position’ to help the car industry. Mervyn King believes it is a matter for government, not the Bank, to come to the aid of ailing industries, and the Bank immediately began briefing against the notion that it should do more: it is not ‘commercially viable’, they said, objecting to Mandelson’s ... ”
Chop, Chop, Chop
Adam Mars-Jones: ‘Grief Is the Thing with Feathers’, 21 January 2016
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
by Max Porter.
Faber, 114 pp., £10, September 2015,978 0 571 32376 0 Show More
by Max Porter.
Faber, 114 pp., £10, September 2015,
“... which had a good sound, as ‘the interspeglium’ and ‘the corigada’, which names, he told Margaret, ‘the children could not understand.’ If I go down to the bottom of the garden it seems as if some one had fallen into the brook. How would you go about dividing Emerson’s grief into components? There seems to be no bargaining and no anger in ... ”
The Brothers Koerbagh
Jonathan Rée: The Enlightenment, 14 January 2002
Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750
by Jonathan Israel.
Oxford, 810 pp., £30, February 2001,0 19 820608 9 Show More
by Jonathan Israel.
Oxford, 810 pp., £30, February 2001,
“... conceded that he did not yet live in ‘an enlightened age’; but thanks to his liberal Prussian king it was at least an ‘Age of Enlightenment’. Kant’s confidence in the ultimate triumph of Enlightenment never wavered, though it took a terrible battering in the remaining twenty years of his life. Frederick the Great died in 1786, to be succeeded by the ... ”
Was Ma Hump to blame?
John Sutherland: Aldous Huxley, 11 July 2002
Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual
by Nicholas Murray.
Little, Brown, 496 pp., £20, April 2002,0 316 85492 1 Show More
by Nicholas Murray.
Little, Brown, 496 pp., £20, April 2002,
“... to expose the relationship.In one respect Murray’s account is less informative than David King Dunaway’s in Huxley in Hollywood (1989). Dunaway, unlike Murray, spoke to Rosalind Bruce Huxley, Leonard’s second wife. Even after seventy years, her recollection was brutal: ‘The girl was village educated in a mild way. It couldn’t have worked. His ... ”
Tacky Dress
Dale Peck, 22 February 1996
Like People in History: A Gay American Epic
by Felice Picano.
Viking, 512 pp., $23.95, July 1995,0 670 86047 6 Show More
by Felice Picano.
Viking, 512 pp., $23.95, July 1995,
How Long Has This Been Going On?
by Ethan Mordden.
Villard, 590 pp., $25, April 1995,0 679 41529 7 Show More
by Ethan Mordden.
Villard, 590 pp., $25, April 1995,
Flesh and Blood
by Michael Cunningham.
Hamish Hamilton, 480 pp., £14.99, June 1995,9780241135150 Show More
by Michael Cunningham.
Hamish Hamilton, 480 pp., £14.99, June 1995,
“... Dancer from the Dance, George Whitmore’s Nebraska, Edmund White’s Nocturnes for the King of Naples; and a decade since the first Aids fiction started to show up: Robert Ferro’s Second Son, David B. Feinberg’s Eighty-Sixed, Allen Barnett’s beautiful The Body and Its Dangers. Today, as a result of political pressure as well as recognition of ... ”
Come hungry, leave edgy
Sukhdev Sandhu: Brick Lane, 9 October 2003
“... became even worse in the course of the decade. In September 1978, just a few months after Margaret Thatcher claimed to understand why English men and women might feel their country was being ‘swamped’ by Commonwealth immigrants, the National Front moved its central offices from Teddington in West London to Great Eastern Street, a few ... ”
Neutered Valentines
David Bromwich: James Agee, 7 September 2006
‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’, ‘A Death in the Family’, Shorter Fiction
by James Agee.
Library of America, 818 pp., $35, October 2005,1 931082 81 2 Show More
by James Agee.
Library of America, 818 pp., $35, October 2005,
Film Writing and Selected Journalism
by James Agee.
Library of America, 748 pp., $40, October 2005,1 931082 82 0 Show More
by James Agee.
Library of America, 748 pp., $40, October 2005,
“... crops up in the dedicatory verses, comparing the mission of Agee and Evans to that of Edgar in King Lear: ‘Edgar, weeping for pity, to the shelf of that sick bluff,/Bring your blind father, and describe a little.’ But they are not much like Edgar, not on the scene to show and expound suffering to the sufferers; and one of Agee’s truest points will be ... ”
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