William Palmer
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Journals: Volume One
By John Fowles, Charles Drazin (ed)
Jonathan Cape 688pp £30 order from our bookshop
JOHN FOWLES IS now a famous and sometimes controversial novelist; this first volume of his journals deals with his years of decided unsuccess until, already in his late thirties, he published his first novel, The Collector. The temptation is to turn straight away to the details of success, but it should be resisted. This large and sometimes difficult book holds great rewards for those who persevere.
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I have just spent a wonderful few minutes re-reading the best book review of the year in my opinion. It's by Piers Brendon in September's issue of @Lit_Review. Beautifully captioned as 'Jack the Lad', Brendon takes Fredrik Logevall's JFK: Vol.I apart! It's a laugh a minute. Ouch!
'Perhaps the real modern polymaths are the hidden ones who do not themselves grab the limelight but have the expertise to bring together different fields of knowledge: librarians, teachers, editors of literary journals…'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/masters-of-none
Jan Morris, who died last week, was a much-loved contributor to our pages. In 2017, she wrote a characteristically witty article about the different winds, their various personalities and how they had touched her life: https://literaryreview.co.uk/let-it-blow.