Latest Blogs
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.
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.
Philip Roth: Enough Failure
Philip Roth’s French interview announcing the end of his writing career has just been published in English.
THE WAY WE WERE
Robert McCrum remembers the old world of publishing and bookselling, writers, printers and agents, now, alas (perhaps) fast fading away.
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”?
DEAD WOOD RHAPSODY
When was it we were promised the paperless office? It seems we can’t do without the white stuff.
THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE
Orhan Pamuk talks about his most recently translated novel and his Museum of Innocence project in Istanbul, based on the novel of the same name.
JOYCE ON THE BATTER
He asked them for credit, they answered him ‘Yea’ …
CHEAP SHOTS
AN Wilson has a bit of a laugh at the expense of victims of sexual exploitation.
SPLITTING THE VOTE
Young Nathan Zuckerman is preaching to his father about politics, but his father has some lessons too about what the Republican party is for.
SEEING BRIGHT PICTURES
Charlotte Brontë receives some well meant advice from a more senior literary figure, which however she finds a little confusing.
READING AS BUTCHERY
Dr Johnson loved books. He loved to pull them apart, rip the heart out of them, devour them.