As a half French, half American individual, I give in to a pastime common to double nationals, which consists of regularly comparing both countries of origin.
The museum in Doughty Street, London, has a temporary exhibition to revisit the established view that Dickens had no truck with science, presenting the discipline not so surprisingly as an extension of his concern with social justice and reform rather than abstract theory.
Stuart Henson listens in to Neil Curry’s artful channeling of Virginia Woolf
Merryn Williams is doubly impressed – both by Andy Croft’s finely crafted poetry and by its subject, the unfairly neglected writer and activist, Randall Swingler
Roger Caldwell considers an impressively substantial volume of poems by Robert Desnos with translations by Timothy Adès
To most Britons, P.G. Wodehouse is known as the creator of quaint, comic novels starring the blundering upper class twit Bertie Wooster and his astute valet Jeeves. He also contributed lyrics and stories to a wealth of musicals and his step great grandson, the opera singer Hal Cazalet, who as a child slept in a room beneath the Wodehouse archive, tells us he only got to know P.G. Wodehouse’s prose through the song lyrics.
Many years after first reading the classic 1930s novel, Sarah Lawson decided to open the book again and write down her second impressions: Emma Lee considers that this re-appraisal was well worthwhile.
Perspectives on Poetry: John Lucas examines three recent studies exploring the craft and ideas of three eminent poets .
Now best-known for writing the novel A Clockwork Orange, which Stanley Kubrick turned into the ultra-violent film of 1971, Anthony Burgess died on 22nd November 1993.
Jeremy Wikeley gives his reactions to the exhibition Larkinworld which is currently at the Poetry Library, Southbank Centre
Roger Caldwell reviews Ian Gordon‘s recent biography of the poet Anne Stevenson
Pleading at the Bar of Truth
John Lucas adds some personal reminiscence to his review of Will Daunt‘s compilation of writings by Eddie Wainwright