Rule by Kindness
The following article was written prior to the death of Tom Dunne When the idea of reviewing Tom Dunne’s memoir was put to me, I hesitated. Years ago, I had resolved not to review books written by friends or close acquaintances. On the whole, despite, some regrets, it made life simpler and the expression […]
A Failure to Return
John Montague: A Poet’s Life, by Adrian Frazier, Lilliput Press, 500 pp, €24.95, ISBN: 978-1843519102 A serious biography, properly considered, is a very curious kind of book. It takes a certain nerve on the part of the author to venture on what the reader must hope will be a fair, accurate and considered account of […]
The Mysterious Alice Munro
In July 2024, three months after Alice Munro died, her daughter, Andrea Munro Skinner, published an essay in the Toronto Star, revealing that her mother’s husband and her own stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, had sexually abused her when she was a child. Sixteen years after the abuse occurred Alice Munro was told of it. She decided […]
The Political Pen
Orwell – the new life, by DJ Taylor, Constable, 960 pp, £14.99, ISBN: 978-1472132987 Who is Big Brother? A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell, by DJ Taylor, Yale University Press, 224 pp, £18.99, ISBN: 978-0300272987 ‘To read him and write about him is one of the greatest satisfactions I know,’ writes DJ Taylor of George […]
A Life of Journeys
Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History, by Peter Brown, Princeton University Press, 736 pp, £38, ISBN: 978-0691242286 As a young boy growing up in the 1930s in a Dublin Protestant family, Peter Brown could have been personally acquainted with the unblessed coupling of politics with religion long before he wrote about its presence […]
