‘Most of us still talk of “Mrs Gaskell”,’ writes Jenny Uglow at the beginning of her splendid new biography. Like Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Gaskell has long been saddled with a cumbersome, misleading (and, in Gaskell’s case, vaguely demeaning) handle; and so before even opening Uglow’s life, we can take heart at its apt and promising […]
Slavenka Drakulić is a Croat. ‘Two years ago, if you mentioned that you came from Croatia (which you probably wouldn’t mention anyway, because you knew it wouldn’t make sense to a foreigner) people would look at you in bewilderment repeating the unknown name with a question mark…’ Things are completely different now. ‘…whereas before, I […]
‘There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.’ It is no wonder that Walter Benjamin is so beloved of literary critics: dead for more than half a century, he still seems able to supply an epigram for every occasion. The only wonder is that Edward Said […]
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