D J Taylor

They Finished Their Drinks and Left

The Soldier's Return

By

Sceptre 346pp £16.99 order from our bookshop

Back in the early 1980s, in the depths of an Oxford winter, I remember trudging through the snow to attend something called the New College Fiction Symposium – a kind of brains trust featuring assorted luminaries of the form (notably Salman Rushdie and Michael Frayn) and chaired by Melvyn Bragg. These, younger readers may perhaps need reminding, were exciting times for the English novel. Midnight’s Children had just scooped the Booker. There was a feeling in the air that a certain kind of book (the Drabble and Amis K kind) was on the way out, and was being replaced by the Rushdie, Barnes and Amis M kind, and at the same time a suspicion that this transfer of power might be rather a good thing.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'It is one of those nice linguistic ironies that English should have attempted to make sex respectable by clothing… ,
    • 'He was to my mind the father of the idea that journalism – yes, even journalism – can have a moral dimension to it… ,
    • RT : Feeling old, as exhumes a piece I wrote 37 years ago. But a joy to see Kathy O’S there too. Here’s why:… ,
    • 'Enough of his character remains just out of reach for Barnes to relish the challenge of imagining him.' Patrick M… ,
    • RT : I did a thing about the new Penguin Book Of Oulipo for this month’s Literary Review: @Lit_Review,
    • 'Moore’s work has been so influential that the former ministers who provided him with much of his information now r… ,
    • 'Although he travels through time and space to find the best produce, his choices, delightfully, are not obvious.'… ,
    Follow Us