WAUGH IN ABYSSINIA
Evelyn Waugh went to Abyssinia as a war reporter in 1935, where he mostly missed the war but thought the Italians were doing a good job of spreading civilisation in darkest Africa.
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PHILIP LARKIN IN WEST BELFAST
The young poet arrived in Ulster’s capital in 1950 and soon got his first glimpse of the province’s great tradition of sectarian politics.
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THE COPY EDITOR AS SEX GOD
Michael Fassbender and Colin Firth are to join forces in a new film which will show the true glamour and romance inherent in the job of changing words on a page.
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THE ARCHIVIST OF AFFRONTS
Claudio Magris’s account of a stubborn chronicler of the copious inconvenience of living.
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POLITICAL POETS
Beware of poets’ mere opinions or opinionating, writes David Wheatley. Many construct whole personae to this end, while secretly defying the reader to see them awry, in an entirely different light.
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DOES GLOBAL CULTURE EXIST?
Tim Parks asks if the power of global literary models, particularly in fiction, can have harmful effects on personal and national self-expression.
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Philip Roth: Enough Failure
Philip Roth’s French interview announcing the end of his writing career has just been published in English.
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THE WAY WE WERE
Robert McCrum remembers the old world of publishing and bookselling, writers, printers and agents, now, alas (perhaps) fast fading away.
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REMEMBERING WILFRED OWEN
Today is Remembrance Day. But what is it that we are remembering – the dead or “the fallen”, the pity of war or its glory, waste or “sacrifice”?
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DEAD WOOD RHAPSODY
When was it we were promised the paperless office? It seems we can’t do without the white stuff.