Carole Angier
Cool Clear Burn
Tolstoy was wrong. All happy families are not alike; certainly all happy people are not alike. There are so few of them it’s hard to compare. But one thing is clear: Diana Athill is a happy person, and there’s no one remotely like her.
She turns ninety this year – indeed, this month. She was the best literary editor in London for nearly fifty years, during which she wrote four startling books of her own. In her eighties, she has written three more: Stet, about her publishing life, Yesterday Morning, about her lucky childhood, and now Somewhere Towards the End, about old age. It is an amazing late flowering, almost as remarkable as Philip Roth’s, though she would reject the comparison.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'This book takes in a lot of territory, all solidly researched and footnoted. But dry? Fuhgeddaboutit.'
Patricia T O'Conner on E J White's 'You Talkin' To Me? The Unruly History of New York English'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/tawk-of-the-town
'The identification of a mighty force sparkling intermittently seems to me to constitute the finest and most consistent poetic achievement of Goudie’s book.'
Candia McWilliam on @lachlangoudie's 'The Story of Scottish Art'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/all-that-glisters
Though 'the hotel had a reputation as the area’s best, its staff were not used to looking after world leaders, so the arrival of Cuba’s new strongman, Fidel Castro, came as something of a shock.'
@dcsandbrook on @simonhallwriter's 'Ten Days in Harlem'.
http://ow.ly/I63850Bvs10