WIVES AND WOMEN: Dale Scherfling reflects on Ernest Hemingway’s life through the women who helped shape it — seeing them not as supporting characters, but as individuals
literature
THE LITERARY BUSINESS Paul McDonald enjoys Peter Finch’s lively and insightful account of more than half a century experiencing the vagaries of life as a writer and literary administrator
THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN – Under Milk Wood seventy years on: an appreciation by Kevin Saving
THE TREASURIES, POETRY ANTHOLOGIES AND THE MAKING OF BRITISH CULTURE: Kevin Saving considers Clare Bucknell’s study of the history of the British poetry anthology
THE WIFE OF WILLESDEN: Charles Rammelkamp takes a transatlantic look at Zadie Smith’s updating of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath
The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka. Review by Alan Price. When you think of the name Franz Kafka those famous and familiar titles, The Trial, The Castle, America, In the Penal Colony and Metamorphosis are the first to be hung round the nervous neck of Franz.
THE LIFE OF MARK AKENSIDE: Roger Caldwell commends Barbara Morden’s work in revisiting the life and work of a neglected poet of the 18th century
THE WASTE LAND: A BIOGRAPHY OF A POEM: Edmund Prestwich admires the depth and scope of Matthew Hollis’s study of T S Eliot’s most famous work
ON POETRY: Emma Lee reviews a new book by Jackie Wills which gives insights into how to develop poetic skills and also how to guide others
HIDDEN SUN: James McGonigal explores James Fountain’s perceptive study of the poet Joseph Macleod
100 POETS. A LITTLE ANTHOLOGY: Kevin Saving considers the selections made and not made for a new anthology compiled by John Carey
Poetry review – AGAINST FALLING: John Forth follows Linda Anderson through an exploration of the birth, life and afterlife of poems
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • added recently on London Grip, books, literature, poetry reviews, year 2026 • Tags: books, John Forth, literature, poetry