Thanks largely to the patience and skill of @manymanyplies and the whole team of Cambridge Quarterly editors, an essay I wrote about Penelope Fitzgerald and Edward Burne-Jones is now available open access here: academic.oup.com/camqtly/articl…

My Christ Church and Faculty of English colleague Felicity Brown has written a marvellous essay and won a prestigious prize!

The best comic writer about tennis that ever lived. Might sound like faint praise, but it isn't.

In remembrance of Robert Gottlieb, who died today, we’ve unlocked his Art of Editing interview from our archive. theparisreview.org/interviews/176…

What are the great books/essays about the idea of "tradition" (literary, historical, theological etc.)? I'm making a reading list and all help much appreciated!

Very late to this insightful and elegant retrospective essay on the great Charles Portis Justin Taylor The Point Magazine thepointmag.com/criticism/old-…

"It can take days to recover and collect oneself from the experience of reading" Highly entertaining interview with Ken Ramchand, one of the great originals... newsday.co.tt/2023/08/27/a-h…

"There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that -- to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail."

One of my favourite books of all time. I remember reading it in my kitchen as a teenager. Every time I tried to write about anything for about fifteen years afterwards I had its "we..." narrative voice somewhere in my ear.

"The great British movie artist of working class Catholic experience and gay identity ... with a voice that might have belonged to a matinee idol." Alongside Distant Voices etc, I have a particular soft spot for his version of Rattigan's Deep Blue Sea. theguardian.com/film/2023/oct/…

At the end of my suffering There was a door. theguardian.com/books/2023/oct…

Terrific

Very sad to hear of the death of the critic and poet Edward Baugh, a giant of West Indian letters.

A cultural history of twentieth-century Britain might fittingly end with a chapter on Caroline Aherne. She was a genius and this is a beautiful, loving portrait. Simon Hattenstone Guardian Film theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2…

Walker Brothers Cowboy. What more can you say?

Fascinating theparisreview.org/blog/2024/05/2…

Lore Segal's late, Manhattan stories have been appearing for a few years now. The one in the current The New Yorker reads like a summation. It's extraordinary, and hearing her reading it in her own voice is magical. newyorker.com/podcast/the-wr…

I'm ten pages from the end and it is indeed extremely good theguardian.com/books/article/…

Lore Segal, who died on Monday, at the age of 96, published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1961, and her final one two weeks ago, some 63 years later. nyer.cm/w7cesDe