Frances Wilson
Titanoraks
Were we to list the Titanic’s legacies, at the top would come the effect of the ship on writing. The sinking of the world’s largest metaphor turned everyone into a writer; those who had never before opened a book or penned a line now found themselves visited by the muse. Hundreds of poems by the public appeared in special Titanic anthologies. Because national grief is endlessly forgiving of literary crimes, lines such as
The steamer Titanic, was unsinkable,
Or so they thunk,
For on her first trip out,
She plumb done sunk
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
It's 'all lively and entertaining but rather too black and white. Her account of British politics and the success of the Brexit campaign verges on the cartoonish.'
@David_Goodhart on Anne Applebaum's 'Twilight on Democracy'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-tale-of-two-parties
'Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, once asked Isaiah Berlin who his ideal dinner guest would be. Without hesitation Berlin exclaimed, ‘William James!’'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-pragmatists-progress
'She digs her images into her story, so that they blow up like psychic land mines when the reader’s perception brushes against them.'
Hilary Mantel reviewing Margaret Atwood: a #BookerPrize double-header from the archive.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-realist-with-wings