Creative Licence

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

Miranda France sits crushed in the back of a crowded taxi, on her way to teach at a residential writing school, and realises she’s bungled this job from the off. She’s well aware that a tutor should always arrive nice and early, not buried under a suitcase alongside the students. ‘To start building the persona […]

Yes to Vikram, No to Hilary?

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

With unflagging zeal and zest, Peter Kemp delves into the awe-inspiring immensity of novel production over the last fifty years or so, mainly in Britain but with glances at English-language fiction from elsewhere. In his introduction he gamely embraces the ‘shimmer of miscellaneousness’ which characterises the genre, listing aesthetic productions of all kinds, sizes and […]

Immortal, Invisible

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

Ann Wroe is probably best known as the wide-ranging obituaries editor of The Economist. Fragments from the weekly obituaries page make an appearance in Lifescapes, but this work, extremely compact compared with her previous books (she has written biographies of Shelley and Pontius Pilate, among others), is far more than an exploration of the personalities […]

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