Steve King
The Courteous Critic
Pieces of My Mind: Writings 1958-2002
By Frank Kermode
Allen Lane The Penguin Press 480pp £25 order from our bookshop
SIR FRANK KERMODE may well be the best-read man in Britain. In the scope and depth of his learning, he is probablv unrivalled. Enelish dons and readers of the London ~kew of Books ha; known this for decades. Thanks to books like Shakespeare’s Language, whose combination of erudition and elegance made it a surprise bestseller in 2000, his reputation continues to spread among nonspecialist readers as he approaches his eighty-fourth birthday.
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
'Of all modern English poets, Larkin is perhaps the one with whom most readers feel some imaginative affinity, a sense of having lived in the same world, with the same streets, the same unvoiced longings and anxieties.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/hull-revisited
For the summer issue of @Lit_Review I wrote about THE GOLDEN RULE, @AmandaPCraig's latest: a lean, high-stakes drama touching on domestic violence, Generation Rent and video game design.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/murder-they-spoke
'He wrote obsessively and at tremendous length – as a youth William drew a witty sketch of his father vigorously beating a dead horse – and frayed his nerves in the process.'
John Banville charts the turbulent life of William James.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-pragmatists-progress