Michael Berkeley
In Black & White
Play It Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible
By Alan Rusbridger
Jonathan Cape 403pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
Many ideas are developed in the course of this musical pilgrimage, and sometimes the subsidiary themes are so gripping that they threaten to eclipse the main subject. In Play It Again Alan Rusbridger, an amateur pianist who already has an unbelievably busy professional life as editor of The Guardian, sets out to master Chopin’s Ballade in G minor.
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
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2
'To me, Elmore Leonard is as comforting in extremity as Pym, and as safe, in the last resort, as Wodehouse. The guys with the best lines are going to come out the other side; the dumb fucks are going to get it in the head or chest.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-spoonful-of-elmore